tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-347135242024-03-13T17:11:37.715-04:00Casting Off"Casting off everything that so easily entangles, let us run with endurance the race set out for us..." Hebrews 12:1<br><br>A continuing pilgrimageMelissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.comBlogger842125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-82653947708717303222019-12-13T18:39:00.000-05:002020-05-02T18:12:23.722-04:00Well it’s back to the battle today<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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“It is not enough for the teacher to
love the child. She must first love and understand the universe.
She must prepare herself, and truly work at it.” —Dr. Maria
Montessori</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">we try out some Montessori</td></tr>
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I’ve been reading a lot about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Montessori" target="_blank">Dr. Maria Montessori (Italy, ca. 1900)</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education" target="_blank">Montessori-based education</a>.
I’ve written about it <a href="http://casting-off.blogspot.com/2018/06/every-man-got-right-to-decide-his-own.html" target="_blank">here</a> before. Although it can feel
overwhelming, this sense that an entire child’s future rests on my
ability to do parenting “right.” I read an article recently that
questioned that thinking, that said that we should be thinking of
educating children more as being a gardener, rather than being a
carpenter. Basically: not worrying about it so much. Not thinking
of parenting as a verb, as something that you do, but as a
relationship. We shepherd our children, we cultivate the ground they
grow in, but we’re not actually trying to shape them, as we would a
board, into a specific design.
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Yet: my struggle is that I feel like
there are many things being done wrong by parents today. There’s
this sense in the article that most parents do things more or less
right, and that most children end up more or less okay. This
assertion I question. I, myself, have struggled for a long time with
something I hesitate to call mental illness, because it feels more
common than that. It feels literally ubiquitous, in the sense that
this cosmic unease—or angst, or a kind of low-level anxiety—is
everywhere. Everyone has it. I’ve written about my struggles with
depression, and I’ve written about my struggles with disordered
eating.</div>
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It is, of course, that eternal question
of <a href="https://babypeapod.tumblr.com/post/72245158931/youve-got-to-laugh-right" target="_blank">nature versus nurture</a>. When things go wrong with our children we
want to blame nature, but when things go well, we think we’re doing
a great job.</div>
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And I feel like many things are going
wrong with children these days, and not just children, because
children grow up to be adults, and adults and children together make
society. There is much I see wrong with our society right now, much
I believe needs to change. Maybe if we focused a little bit more on our
children, on the ways in which their needs are and are not being met
(or maybe I say so because I happen to have a preschooler) we might
see some changes at a larger societal level.</div>
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I just hunted online for my possibly
apocryphal article (which, I believe, really did make the case that
the kids were going to turn out okay), and it turns out that the
research is actually from <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781250132253" target="_blank">a book by Alison Gopnik titled <i>The Gardener and the Carpenter.</i></a> Maybe I heard about it
on my new favorite (that’s a stretch—I have so many favorite
podcasts right—but I wish to God they’d do an episode about Carl
Jung) podcast, <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=614054515" target="_blank">“Hidden Brain.”</a></div>
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It turns out that Alison Gopnik makes
exactly the point I’m trying to make, much better than I could,
about the problems with the carpentry method, and the gardening
method that she supports is akin to Montessori.</div>
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Referring to the carpentry model, she
says: “the main harm is that it makes the process -- the life of
being a parent -- anxious and difficult and tense and unhappy in all
sorts of ways that are unnecessary. And I think it makes it that way
for parents, and it makes it that way for children… the carpentry
story is one where you're so concerned that the child come out that
you're not giving the child the freedom to take risks and explore and
be autonomous.”</div>
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Even though children of carpenters can
be considered more successful: “in some ways, they're doing much
better. They're achieving more, they're less likely to take risks,
they are less likely to get pregnant or to use drugs. But that goes
with a kind of anxiety -- high levels of anxiety, high levels of fear
…that is what you would predict from the carpentry story.”</div>
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So, Montessori. Although whenever I
mention the word, especially to another mother, I find my listener’s
eyes immediately shut down: already they’re hearing, “You’re
doing it wrong. Do it this way instead.”</div>
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Which, in short, is what I am saying.
But I’m not saying: worry more about how you’re parenting. I’m
saying: trust your children to follow their own path. Prepare their
environment, make it safe, and then get out of their way. Don’t
worry about whether or not they’re doing the right thing, but trust
that what they’re doing meets their current developmental need,
whatever that is.</div>
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I find it so difficult to put this
essential Montessori principle into words. It is, as Dr. Montessori
wrote herself, the “secret of childhood,” but the more I learn
about it the more I see these principles borne out by research again,
again, and again, not just for children, and not in work that uses
Montessori terminology. It seems to be not just the secret of
childhood, but the secret to happiness, to contentment, to joy.</div>
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# </div>
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Take, for instance, the idea of focus.
That particular intense concentration that children use in order to
grow, to explore, to learn to do the things that they need to do in
order to be complete human beings. The focus that a baby has when
she is learning to crawl, or walk. It is one of the things that
initially drew me to the practice, all the blogs with moms showing
pictures of their children with what I now call Montessori face: a
look of intense focus. Of inner drive and determination.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.howwemontessori.com/.a/6a0147e1d4f40f970b01b8d205dcdc970c-800wi" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="266" src="https://www.howwemontessori.com/.a/6a0147e1d4f40f970b01b8d205dcdc970c-800wi" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.howwemontessori.com/how-we-montessori/2016/07/independent-baking-using-a-toaster-oven.html" target="_blank">independent baking</a></td></tr>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"We cannot know the consequences of
suppressing a child’s spontaneity when he is just beginning to be
active. We may even suffocate life itself. That humanity which is
revealed in all its intellectual splendor during the sweet and tender
age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious
veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just
beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a
child to open up himself to life.” --Dr. Maria Montessori</blockquote>
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I’ve begun to think of those moments
when my daughter is in deep focus as sacred. To interrupt her, to
ask her if she needs to drink some water, or to teach her how to construct
a tower, or to say we’re leaving for the library— any of these
things interrupt the neural pathways that she is building, the
pathways that she will use for the rest of her life when she is
deeply immersed in something invaluable to her.
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="firstHeading"></a>In short, it
is flow. I take for granted that you’ve read <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi" target="_blank">Mikhail Csikszentmihalyi</a>’s work on flow?
Or that, even if you haven’t, you know what I mean? Flow is that
right-brained state an artist enters into when he is painting, or a
writer when she is writing, or a violinist when he is practicing.
Full immersion into a timeless eternal state, where one may as well
not be in one’s body. Again and again, in study after study, in
book after book, I read about flow as being the one essential element to happiness. People are happy in their jobs when they can find
flow. In their lives, when they have a hobby that allows them to
slip into that state. That old saw “do what you love and you’ll
never work a day in your life” is about flow. I keep reading
self-help books, and they constantly refer to the concept of flow,
and how essential it is to recover true contentment. (<i><a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781101875322" target="_blank">Designing Your Life</a> </i>is the book I read most recently that mentioned the concept.)</div>
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We say what we most want for our
children is happiness, but really we deprive our children of the
concentration that brings it, every chance we get. When they’re
born we immediately pack their playrooms with every possible brightly
colored electronic gadget that sings and dances, with rotund jovial
cartoon animals that never occur in life, with screens and noise and
color and sensation—anything to distract them from the horror of
life— that must be what we really believe, right?—and then we
wonder why they’re unable to put their own toys away, why they
can’t sleep, why they’re having tantrums, why they’re so upset.
All they need is a calm, safe place to discover the world and all we
offer them is distraction.</div>
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# </div>
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Take, for another, the Montessori idea
of self-reliance.</div>
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Or self-trust, self-motivation,
self-esteem — whatever you call it. The idea that I can know
myself, deeply, intimately, and believe, at an intuitive level, that I
know what is right for myself. I have come back to this
self-reliance in my own life as I’ve begun intuitive eating,
learning that my own body’s fullness and hunger signals can be
trusted. Again, it is something that reoccurs in my reading so often, especially
on the self-help websites I frequent: the number one predictor of
happiness is intrinsic motivation. (Like here! Link: "<a href="https://getpocket.com/explore/item/self-reliance-is-the-secret-sauce-to-consistent-happiness" target="_blank">Self-Reliance Is the Secret Sauce to Consistent Happiness</a>") </div>
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Anyone can be shamed into doing
anything. It’s a method of force, like physical pain. As soon as
no one’s looking, though, we’re going to go back to the thing
that we really wanted. When we become ashamed of ourselves, we lose
our ability to trust our inner intuition. For a child, self-trust
depends on learning that the way I want to play the blocks is a
manifestation of my own imagination, and of no one else’s. It
means teaching children that their desires can be trusted, and
followed, and that they lead where they should go.</div>
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It’s one of the things I’ve read
about early-childhood education that has the most data to back it up:
this understanding that saying “good job” actually subverts
children’s sense of self, because it takes away their ability to
rely on their own intuition and motivation. Link: <a href="http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/" target="_blank">"How Not to Talk to Your Kids," by Po Bronson</a></div>
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"In short, 'good job!' doesn’t reassure children; ultimately, it makes them feel less secure." --<a href="https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/five-reasons-stop-saying-good-job/" target="_blank">"Five Reasons To Stop Saying Good Job," by Alfie Kohn</a> </div>
</blockquote>
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"<a href="https://www.childoftheredwoods.com/articles/good-jobs-high-fives" target="_blank">Excess praise</a> can be damaging to our children's intrinsic motivation (working just for the pure pleasure of it -- not to please anyone else)." --<a href="https://www.childoftheredwoods.com/articles/good-job" target="_blank">"Break the Good Job Habit" by Aubrey Hargis</a>
</div>
</blockquote>
It’s so counter-intuitive, right?
Because we’re saying that what the child is doing is good!
We’re supporting him! We’re telling her she SHOULD trust
herself! Aye, there’s the rub: <b>US</b> adults, from the
outside, telling children what to do, what’s good, what’s bad,
instead of allowing them to discover the world for themselves.
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The reason we don’t say good job is
not because we don’t think our children are doing a good job. It’s
because we don’t want them to be reliant on other people to think
that they’re doing a good job. We want that sense of satisfaction
to come from inside, rather than from outside.</div>
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"Lest there be any misunderstanding, the point here is not to call into
question the importance of supporting and encouraging children, the need
to love them and hug them and help them feel good about themselves.
Praise, however, is a different story entirely." --<a href="https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/five-reasons-stop-saying-good-job/" target="_blank">Alfie Kohn</a> </div>
</blockquote>
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I continue to struggle with
praise as an adult, as a writer. All I want as a writer is external validation. In the
form of publication, or an agent or an editor telling me that my
words are worthy of reproduction. In the form of money. In the form
of an audience, of you, reading these words. It’s not enough for
me simply to write them, to produce them for the joy they give me,
the sense I have of order coalescing as I organize my sentences. I
want you, reader, to tell me “good job.” Preferably in the
comments.
</div>
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So. Is it any surprise that I want
something different for my daughter? Something different than what
was given to us by our parents, and what I’ve consistently watched
other people give their children: shame, and guilt, and constant
reliance on external validation.</div>
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A brief story: we toured a Montessori
school (<a href="https://www.bridgeviewmontessori.org/" target="_blank">Bridgeview Montessori</a>) and the director said that she’d
sent her daughter to Montessori preschool, but then to kindergarten
at a traditional school. When she and her husband figured out that
it wasn’t working for their daughter, they brought her back into
Montessori school. Even in that one brief year, she had
unlearned this ability to trust her own intuition, her reliance on
intrinsic motivation, her own inner sense of self. The girl would
bring her drawings up to the teacher and say: isn’t this good? Is
this what you wanted? Is this how it should be colored?</div>
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The Montessori-trained teacher would
have to answer: what do YOU think? Is it good for you? Is that how
you wanted your drawing to come out? Can you talk to me about it?</div>
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That’s after one year. Only one year
of traditional school.</div>
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“...it's particularly
ironic because school was actually designed as part of trying to get
people trained for an industrial world. In a sense, school was
designed to make robots, in that it gave people skills that now
robots are capable of doing. And in a post-industrial world, exactly
the skills that we need -- innovation, creativity, risk-taking -- are
exactly the ones that we're not encouraging.” --Alison Gopnik</div>
</blockquote>
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When I say I want this self-trust for myself, I
mean that I’m thinking of starting remedial Montessori workshops
for adults. Because I have 41 years of that kind of programming to
counteract. It’s why yoga has been my heart-song for the last
however many years. In yoga, the teacher says: allow your body to
be what it is today. Listen to your body, the same way in Montessori
we say: follow the child. In yoga, the lights are off and I’m on
my mat myself, no one to impress, no teacher to show off for. Even
though 99 percent of the time, I’m thinking: did that impress her?
Or: oh no, I’m not doing it right.
</div>
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The other crazy thing about Montessori
is how it actually works. Every principle that I’ve taken
seriously and implemented consistently has had unforeseen benefits
and astonishing success. It works.
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The irony is that articles about teenagers all essentially say the same things. Have good boundaries
and agreed-upon limits with your children. (Montessori: freedom
within limits.) Teach them how to do things themselves rather than
doing them for them. Give them autonomy and responsibility rather
than helicoptering all over the place. It seems like so much of what
we’ve done with the millennial generation, all the evils that are
blamed on them, is exactly the opposite: our fault. The boomers,
the Karens. We’ve given them no freedom--not to go outdoors, or to
get jobs, or to hang out with their friends--and instead have given
them limitless addictive technology that may literally be killing
their brains. ("God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains,” says <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/17/can-mark-zuckerberg-fix-facebook-before-it-breaks-democracy" target="_blank">Sean Parker, Facebook's first president.</a>)</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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"...that parent can take on the most important role of parenting, that of
teaching the child to take care of himself by demonstrating how it is
done." --"<a href="https://www.loveandlogic.com/a/info/when-its-time-for-them-to-get-a-life" target="_blank">When It's Time for Them To Get a Life,"</a> by Jim Fay
</div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"An emerging adult who takes the time to deeply reflect and raise their
own self-awareness about their innermost desires can be guided by them
if they have at least some clues from listening to who they are and what
they value.” --<a href="https://www.parenttoolkit.com/social-and-emotional-development/advice/self-awareness/how-to-help-my-young-adult-find-their-purpose" target="_blank">"How To Help My Young Adult Find Their Purpose,"</a> by Jennifer Miller</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"While some parents may think that they are helping their children to
make better decisions and to fix the consequences of their actions,
research has shown that parental codependency may alienate children from
their own feelings and distance them from <a class="ext" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8771451" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">self-determination<span aria-label="(link is external)" class="ext"></span></a>. Ultimately, parents may want to consider setting up boundaries for their children, and also for themselves." --<a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-intelligent-divorce/201210/failure-launch-male-and-stuck-home" target="_blank">"Failure to Launch," by Mark Banschick</a> </blockquote>
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I become more and more frustrated
because not everyone shares this view. The first two essential parts
of Montessori education are prepared caregivers and a prepared
environment, and I fear I am giving my daughter neither. I do my
best, but I’ve been taught to be a voiceless people-pleaser my
whole life, and despite my attempts to the contrary, I am not always
finding the courage to speak up in favor of autonomy, and joy, and
creative freedom, for her or for myself. Plus, these things are
effing expensive. I applied for financial aid at a local Montessori
school and was told that their financial aid maxes out at 30 percent,
meaning if we were to qualify for the maximum, and send Sagan to
school part-time for three days a week, school would still cost $5000
a year. This, despite Dr. Maria Montessori explicitly designing the
method for poor children.
</div>
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Then I read the data about how
important Montessori is, and how it’s even more effective when
children come from disadvantaged or impoverished backgrounds. It can erase differences between income levels. “The difference in academic
achievement between lower income Montessori and higher income
conventionally schooled children was smaller at each time point, and
was not (statistically speaking) significantly different at the end
of the study," says the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5670361/" target="_blank">National Institutes of Health</a>. "<span class="contentTweetBlock">The Montessori Method is not only superior to all alternatives, but categorically so," says America Magazine, in <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2018/06/29/montessori-schools-are-exceptionally-successful-so-why-arent-there-more" target="_blank">this article</a>. </span>"The scientific link between executive function and school success
couldn’t be clearer, but the real opportunity lies in taking that
science out of the lab and putting it into practice inside the homes and
classrooms of our youngest learners," says <a href="https://www.mindinthemaking.org/the-science-of-a-strong-start/" target="_blank">Mind in the Making, a nonprofit founded by Jeff Bezos</a> (himself a Montessori alum). </div>
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Still, despite the evidence of these and many other studies, education in this
country is not based on science. Nothing in our country is based on
actual scientific data, least of all the precious minds of our most
vulnerable. As a country, we continue to use outmoded, outdated,
hundreds-of-years-old traditional pedagogy.</div>
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Meanwhile, I’m watching the
elementary school in our community be torn down and rebuilt with a
$90 million state grant. Money that would pay for 1400 teachers, or
to retrofit our public school into a Montessori one, as <a href="https://www.edutopia.org/article/public-school-makes-case-montessori-all" target="_blank">this low-income school in rural South Carolina did</a>. (<a href="https://www.edutopia.org/article/public-school-makes-case-montessori-all" target="_blank">Link: "Public School Makes the Case for Montessori for All.</a>) It feels like a
purposeful attempt to ignore the reality of what is involved in good
education for all children. Because a well-educated populace would mean that
people have the courage to become active. They wouldn’t be
consumed by anxiety and diseases of despair, cocooned inside their
houses and their devices. Freedom means the courage to take
action: against climate change, against racism, against children’s
concentration camps.</div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“How can we speak of Democracy or
Freedom when from the very beginning of life we mould the child to
undergo tyranny, to obey a dictator? How can we expect democracy when
we have reared slaves? Real freedom begins at the beginning of life,
not at the adult stage. These people who have been diminished in
their powers, made short-sighted, devitalized by mental fatigue,
whose bodies have become distorted, whose wills have been broken by
elders who say: 'your will must disappear and mine prevail!'—how
can we expect them, when school-life is finished, to accept and use
the rights of freedom?” --<a href="https://senoritacorinnasclassroom-blog.tumblr.com/post/49533617256/how-can-we-speak-of-democracy-or-freedom-when-from" target="_blank">Dr. Maria Montessori, Education for a New World </a></div>
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<style type="text/css">P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }</style>Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-32326827846482234022018-10-12T20:06:00.000-04:002018-10-12T20:06:41.122-04:00Two three break<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>A perfect example</i></td></tr>
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What I want for my daughter, from friends and family, for her second birthday (or for Christmas, or any subsequent gift-giving occasions):<br />
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-Above all, clean air, water, and earth: to remember that what we want most for our daughter is a future unpolluted by plastic waste, uncorrupted by vast consumer monopolies, and that our most ardent wish is that money not be spent in her name on things that are destroying her future.<br />
-tools. Actual tools, sized for a child’s hands, tools that actually work and do things, not sets from Amazon or Target or Walmart.<br />
-sports equipment<br />
-an actual basketball or football or soccer ball<br />
-a baseball bat or baseball glove<br />
-a tennis racket<br />
-a ukulele<br />
a small-sized lacrosse stick (preferably used)<br />
-real, small-sized things, made of cloth or metal or wood, not plastic. Homemade things, things made by artisans, or craftspeople, paid a living wage.<br />
-framed art<br />
-real rain gear. Not something cute from a box store, but something that will keep her dry and warm if we decide to go and play in the rain.<br />
-Brownell binoculars<br />
-a sturdy wooden steps tool with two steps<br />
-a crinkle cutter<br />
-child-sized baking and cooking implements (not sets; not toys)<br />
-a Waldorf hand kite<br />
-a Waldorf art book<br />
-anything from these sites: <a href="http://michaelolaf.com/">michaelolaf.com</a>, <a href="http://www.howwemontessori.com/how-we-montessori/otis-2-years/" target="_blank">How We Montessori</a>, <a href="http://amightygirl.com/">amightygirl.com</a><br />
-anything from <a href="http://etsy.com/">etsy.com</a><br />
-anything <a href="https://bcorporation.net/about-b-corps" target="_blank">from</a> a <a href="https://bcorporation.net/directory?search=children&industry=&country=&state=&city=" target="_blank">B corporation</a><br />
-solar panels for our house<br />
-an electric car [Karl learned to drive when he was 3. Just saying.]<br />
-a spaceship<br />
-rock-climbing holds<br />
-a child-sized guitar<br />
-a go-cart<br />
-a magnetic chess set<br />
-art or music or gymnastics or children’s yoga classes, which we find it difficult to afford<br />
-two days a week at <a href="http://www.montessoribeginnings.com/" target="_blank">Montessori school</a><br />
-peace on earth<br />
-that you match whatever you spend on gifts for hers dollar for dollar with investments in her college fund, or in divested mutual funds<br />
-To remember that we are raising our daughter as an anti-consumerist. To remember that you are not just buying her gifts but you are spending your dollars on a future for her—either one with an ocean emptied of fish and flooded with plastic soup, or one with a functional, joyful civilization not riven by climate chaos. To remember that *you* are the one supporting that future for her in how you spend your dollars. In fact, how you spend your dollars is the only real way you are building a future for her—one way or another.Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-9592154856324395472018-09-23T20:33:00.003-04:002018-09-23T20:36:40.748-04:00Upon the bitter green she walks<div style="text-align: left;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Why feminism is worth fighting for</i></td></tr>
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My second post of 2018, and my first since June. I am writing less briskly but I am still writing. That’s important. Last year we moved to Wareham, Massachusetts.</div>
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I spent last summer driving back and forth to Maine for Sagan’s immunizations, and working on the new house. The move was in September--a whole year ago now--and the walls and windows remain unfinished and the house itself is a work in progress. Also, and we may be the only family in New England to have consciously made this decision, we are living without internet. The discussion continues to be whether or not there is a way to get internet (including smart phones) that would not involve having life taken over by it—and I can’t think of a way.<br />
<br />
So I am living without it, like the Amish. It makes it difficult to maintain a blog, although I’ve been intending to since Sagan’s birth. In order to put these words on paper, and then onscreen, I must close myself in a room with earplugs, and harden my heart to the banging on the door, and somehow find a way toward a creative self.<br />
<br />
My last adventure was attending all three days of the “International Fiction Now” conference at Brown University, a 50-minute drive from Wareham, just for the gorgeous pleasure of hearing sentences strung together. It was a celebration of the work of Robert Coover, to whom I can’t help but refer now as “Bob.” It was a stunning assortment of writers. And also rather misogynist.<br />
<br />
One of the things that happened in my two-year hiatus, in addition to me birthing a daughter, was the #metoo movement, to which I listened, enrapt. (When one does not have internet, one listens to the radio during all waking hours. As if one lived in 1944.) Having a child makes you realize the inequities between men and women like nothing else. I was struck by Robert Coover’s story the final night. Yes, it was absurdist. Yes, experimental. It’s more or less a story as a joke, a story as a concept—but like so many of his stories there’s much more going on, and underneath the surface is a wife cooking and cleaning and raising children for a man, a man she has sex with in the moonlight, a man for whom she toils. And I kept finding these women at the edges of the conference. The wife at the end of Jonathan Baumbach’s story “Baby,” who announces to the author of the story—busy writing his collection of short stories with a one-year-old baby as main character—that lunch is ready. Were I so lucky as to have someone announce that lunch were ready for me. Dorcas Palmer in Marlon James’s reading from “A Brief History of Seven Killings.” Even the beautiful younger women, in their sixties, or seventies, accompanying the decrepit male writers who read at the conference, in their eighties and nineties. These women, most second or third wives, were the ones doing the child-rearing, the dishes, the laundry while their male partners wrote. I thought this, as I thought of my own daughter at home.<br />
<br />
In absolute numbers the percentage of women writers reading at the conference, in the sessions I attended, was 38 percent—11 men to seven women. It reminded me of this interview I heard on NPR: “If there's 17 percent women, the men in the group think it's 50-50. And if there's 33 percent women, the men perceive that as there being more women in the room than men.” —<a href="http://inthesetimes.com/article/16157/our_feminized_society" target="_blank">Our Feminized Society</a><br />
[the quote is from Geena Davis, and her Institute on Gender in Media--lots of great stuff in her <a href="https://www.npr.org/2013/06/30/197390707/casting-call-hollywood-needs-more-women" target="_blank">interview</a>, and at <a href="https://seejane.org/research-informs-empowers/" target="_blank">the Institute's Research page</a>]<br />
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Even that doesn’t represent the truth of it, because 100 percent of the late-night sessions—the key evening speakers, the elder statesmen of the conference—were men: Ben Marcus, TC Boyle, Bill Kennedy, Don DeLillo, Paul Auster, and of course, Bob Coover. The women, even such impressive names as Edwidge Dandicat and Siri Hustvedt, were relegated to the afternoons. And the highest percentage of women was in the first-night session, with six readers—four women, two men. Six readers crammed into one session that went late into the night, at a smaller venue, with each reader given less time.<br />
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As the New Yorker so succinctly puts it: </div>
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But the balance is so hard. Especially now that I understand the
visceral tug of motherhood. I mean that literally: I feel it in my
viscera.</div>
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Most of it is the sheer pleasure of mothering. It’s pleasurable. The oxytocins bursts after childbirth and during nursing—the largest injection of the love and happiness hormone that human beings ever experience. I understand why women keep doing it. <br />
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“Joy has been the great surprise of motherhood.” —<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/karen-russell-reads-orange-world/id1093570212?i=1000412461600&mt=2" target="_blank">Karen Russell</a>, "Orange World," @NewYorker [again] #karenrussell #orangeworld<br />
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From the novel “Motherhood” by Sheila Heti:<br />
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“On the one hand, the joy of children. On the other hand, the misery of them. On the one hand, the freedom of not having children. On the other hand, the loss of never having had them—but what is there to lose? The love, the child, and all those motherly feelings that the mothers speak about in such an enticing way, as though a child is something to have, not something to do. The doing is what seems hard. The having seems marvelous.”</blockquote>
Spoiler alert: she decides not to have kids. Spoiler alert: and still has time to write a novel.<br />
<br />
My main feeling after hearing “Orange World” by Karen Russell was jealousy. She, too, had a “geriatric pregnancy.” Her discussion of breastfeeding and the joy of having a child into your late thirties can only be autobiographical. So I assume, without having the time or inclination to google. But she took that time and wrote it, used it to make this exquisite, violent, crepuscular story.<br />
<br />
I’ve been doing some spectacular reading though. During the course of Sagan’s incubation and infancy, I read all seven volumes of Proust. If we named her after the Princesse de Sagan, then I knew I must read the entirety of “In Search of Lost Time." That is the gift Sagan gave me by being born, the gift that K. gave me by originally suggesting we name her after the astrophysicist—that now I have become acquainted with these other Sagans, too. The ultimate aristocrats for Marcel Proust, and the nom de plume of Francoise Sagan.<br />
<br />
My favorite Frenchism within "In Search of Lost Time"—he spends a lot of pages describing aspects and vernacular of the French language, some of the funniest parts, if you're acquainted with French—was how Francoise, the housekeeper and a much more important character than you’d expect—called the Princesse de Sagan “la Sagante.”<br />
<br />
La Sagante. That’s my daughter all over.<br />
<br />
Francoise—another woman who hangs around doing the cooking and cleaning for a man that writes. Or doesn’t write, but sits and broods about writing. (Not dissimilarly to Coover’s main character.) She dusts his pages. And rearranges them.<br />
<br />
As does Francoise Sagan—her book <i>Bonjour Tristesse</i> stunned me. Somehow also she rearranges Proust’s story and retells it, all those hundreds of thousands of words in 100 slim pages. How is it that more people don’t read this book, or talk about it? Or know about it? Because it was written by a nineteen-year-old girl? It strikes me that there are so many teenaged girl heroines because it’s not until later in life that women get beaten down by being told what they are not to do. Joan of Arc, Francoise Sagan. Albertine.<br />
<br />
I am writing about misogyny in a blog post I will never publish because I am afraid of a misogynist backlash. What will Bob Coover think? What will Rick Moody think? What will William Kennedy think? Will any of them ever read my novel in which a nineteen-year-old girl is beaten by her boyfriend? Is it misogynist that I have written this scene? Or is it misogynist that we don’t have more novels in which this ubiquitous violence is explored, discussed? Two women die every week at the hands of their domestic partners. Not in the US, in Britain. In the US it’s four a day. And it isn’t even news. When was the last time you heard a story about domestic violence on TV? Or are you too busy watching puppy videos?<br />
<br />
My daughter makes me want to be a better feminist. I want this violence not to touch her. I want discrimination and self-doubt not to hamstring her as it has hamstrung me. Most men, and many women, still claim such discrimination doesn’t exist. Yet I see how already it affects her. How all of the characters in Winnie the Pooh (save Kanga, the mother--natch) and Sesame Street are male. How people respond strangely when she collects spiders, or spends half an hour staring at a bulldozer—and respond gushingly when she kisses a stuffed animal. I see how my friends with boy children are embarrassed when their sons clutch at baby dolls. Children aren’t stupid. Millennia of evolution have caused them to be exquisitely sensitive to our every nonverbal, subconscious response.<br />
<br />
Girl children know. I know. You know. They know. Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-6792925763539040362018-06-06T13:44:00.000-04:002018-06-06T19:05:11.277-04:00Every man got the right to decide his own destiny<div><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-55TZMRngQPY/WxhoqA6GkmI/AAAAAAAACfo/8Y3_Eai6PBMqG_6FuEtU0A6-L-9XwCkAQCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/P1080363-711293.jpg"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-55TZMRngQPY/WxhoqA6GkmI/AAAAAAAACfo/8Y3_Eai6PBMqG_6FuEtU0A6-L-9XwCkAQCK4BGAYYCw/s320/P1080363-711293.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_6564111527899992674" /></a></div><div><br></div>A new post, my first since Sagan's birth, and she is nineteen months old, so that's a nineteen month hiatus. I suppose that's about the length of time it takes for things to normalize. Not that they have or ever will—I don't want things to go back to "normal"—she is a joy, and every minute I get to spend with her is a gift. Nevertheless I am beginning to understand, now, why there are so few mothers who are also artists.<div><br></div><div>It is difficult to manage motherhood and any kind of creative life, especially if you also include self-care. Balance is challenging. I know it gets easier every day, as it already is, as I have time to write these words, and I actually want to <i>cherish</i> each of these days to the best of my ability.</div><div><br></div><div>Everyone says it goes so fast, and already it does. Knowing how fast it goes doesn't change its speed, and I am still surprised by the experience of it. Of course I also have bad days, including this week. It's easy to feel like I am squandering, already, my daughter's childhood, with fear and self-doubt and recrimination.</div><div><br></div><div>Nothing changes when you have children. It's just an overlay atop the person you already are, the fears and doubts you already had. And of course everything changes when you have children. Every cliche about parenthood is true verbatim.</div><div><br></div><div>She is still willing to cuddle close to my breast, to snug up beneath my chin, to come to me without hesitation to kiss her boo-boos.</div><div><br></div><div>When things are hard, all I have to do is remember how astounding she is. She is uniquely herself, as, of course, all babies are, all humans are—but still. She is herself. She is amazing, and I can't take any credit. She's so independent, and easy-going, and creative.</div><div><br></div><div>Since her birth, I've been reading about Dr. Maria Montessori, the Italian doctor and feminist who invented the "Montessori method." If I had to sum up her philosophy, I'd say that she insists on the autonomy of each individual child, that from birth we are learning through experience, and our job as parents and teachers is to present the world in such a way that children can develop confidence in their own abilities, to be able to care for themselves independently as soon as they are able.</div><div><br></div><div>I am shocked by the dysfunctional consumerism that has arisen around children in our culture. How many contemporary parents have children kept forever in cages: cribs, high chairs, walkers, strollers, car seats, playpens. All made of plastic, all cheap, all destined for the ash heap of history. Often these babies have screens as their only companion. All in the name of "safety." The devil has been renamed "safety" by our culture. People are so afraid of their children bumping their heads or scraping their knees that they'd rather yell at them, suppress their every instinct toward freedom, independence, creativity, adventure. This is selfishness. Our fear taking precedence over their self-development.</div><div><br></div><div>"We cannot know the consequence of suppressing the spontaneity of childhood. <u>We may even suffocate life itself.</u> That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendor should be respected with a kind of religious veneration." —Maria Montessori</div><div><br></div><div>All human beings are uniquely special, especially precious: all of us have our cargo to carry into the world. As my epigraph says: we each have our race set out for us.</div><div><br></div><div>"…you are happy for your child because you know that she is happy. You are happy not because your child is a 'super baby.' At any age, developing an inflated idea of self leads eventually to isolation and loneliness. Our goal is to help children appreciate that they are unique human beings and special to us. However, we want them to realize that all other human beings are unique, too." —Paula Polk Lillard and Lynn Lillard Jessen, "Montessori from the Start"</div><div><br></div><div>Yes, this has become a "mommy blog." Sucks for you. Although I can't help thinking that if someone like Jonathan Franzen or Philip Roth decided to write online about parenting, their website would be called "a series of short essays on fatherhood," and not a daddy blog. Yet another example of the diminutive way we refer to motherhood, the saccharine bromides that steal away the resonance of mothering. We cheapen and diminish the experience of women and infantilize mothers because to do otherwise would mean that we would HEAR THEIR VOICES: how deep the experience is, how terrifying, how hard.</div><div><br></div><div>But really, how <i>easy</i> she is. Her needs are simple: food, water, comfort, new experience. She is filled with joy at being in the world. Even when she is having a hard time it's for a reason that makes sense and all she really needs is reassurance, love, attunement. <br><div><br></div><div>I love how she makes this face when she nurses, as if milk is the most delicious substance known to creation, this little quiver in her eyebrows as her eyes lower, as if she's a critic tasting the most delicious wine of all of history. There's how she clutches my fingers when I'm trying to do something, just to be closer to me. To keep me focused on her. How she wraps her arms around my boob like it's a huge beach ball, or a body pillow. How she utters this deep sigh, pulls off, and rests her head gently against my breast. Her laugh. It's the most beautiful sound in the world—deeper than expected, almost guttural, like a chuckle—oh. It is darling. It makes my heart hurt. How smart she is, how she's been signing since she was four months old, and how hard she tries to communicate with us, how interested she is by the world, especially new things, new people, new places. How beautiful she is, even for a baby—her porcelain skin, her gorgeous birthmark, her little curved thumbs, her almond eyes, bow mouth, perfect nose, wide cheeks. These are the cliches but they are also true. How strong she is. How when she tries to do something she pushes with every ounce of her muscle. How hard she grips my fingers, so hard she can dangle from them. How she jumps, how hard she tries to do what we're trying to do. There are so many ways to love her. The way she looks at me, as if she's drinking me in, just so curious about who I am and what's going on, no matter what I'm doing, as if she could just stare at me for decades.</div><div><br></div><div>I wrote this paragraph a while ago and already she has grown so much. I keep thinking that all of these words I have written on this site, for twelve years now, are actually for her, for no one else. I just didn't know that when I wrote them. The dear grad student to whom I address my journals: her. And she'll have to read through all my self-hatred and ingratitude too. She makes me want to be better, and teaches me how to be better.</div><div><br></div><div>[Some good Montessori blogs, for the curious:</div><div><a href="http://www.howwemontessori.com/how-we-montessori/2018/04/transitioning-to-a-floor-bed-montessori.html#comments">Transitioning to a Floor Bed - Montessori - how we montessori</a></div><div><a href="http://montessorionthedouble.com/2015/02/18/video-marks-science-lesson-on-circuits/#respond">Video: Mark's Science Lesson on Circuits! | Montessori On The Double</a></div><div><a href="http://www.thismerrymontessori.com/">This Merry Montessori – joyful parenting, joyful child</a> ] </div></div>Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-60567934126137848332016-12-31T23:59:00.000-05:002017-01-01T00:06:57.558-05:00I wish I lived in the power and the light<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Mother nature's daughter</i></td></tr>
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I miss the days when everyone poured out their heart on epistolary MySpace blogs. I also miss the Reagan administration, for different reasons, so that should come as no surprise.<br />
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Now we live in a world of instant Instagram selfies, and I am nostalgic for the web log of yesteryear, the Livepad courier-font blogs, where we were allotted more than 140 characters to explicate the intricacies of our lives.<br />
<br />
So I am announcing the birth of Sagan Tomasik-Jenks, born in October, via the interwebs. This is a photograph of her from Thanksgiving in Tennessee, in her cast-off boys' and girls' clothes. Isn't she the most gorgeous thing you have ever seen?<br />
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I have posted twice on this blog this year and I make no apology. The best thing about real friends is how you can pick up where you left off as if no time has passed. I have eight minutes before midnight in 2016 and that long to catch you up on my life. Sagan, her father, and I still live in Maine, although we were in Tennessee when we took that picture, and we are in Massachusetts for the New Year now. Spirit, our boat, still sits in the driveway, and we plan to live aboard her. Eventually. Or start a micro-papermill in Bridgewater. Or farm sheep.<br />
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But I see having a baby as no reason to stop sailing. For reference:<br />
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http://www.bumfuzzle.com/<br />
http://saltykisses.net/<br />
http://zachaboard.blogspot.com/<br />
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And especially: <br />
http://www.windtraveler.net/2013/07/on-boating-with-baby-and-being.html<br />
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It has been a year for grief and withdrawal. K's stepfather, and also his great-aunt, more like a grandmother to him, died this year. Also pregnancy, an experience of becoming another being's vessel. I had thoughts about hollowness, emptiness--and the beauty of feeling a person come alive inside me. It's hard to put all this into words. I understand more thoroughly why there are so few mother artists, at least of the canonical variety. This different kind of more silent art, breeding life.<br />
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It makes me think of platitudes and I feel positive loathing towards platitudes. But of birth and death, seasons beginning and ending. I am more conscious of the passage of time than I ever have been. I measure weeks in the inches that Sagan grows. Already she has outgrown the elephant onesie in the photograph. She wore another elephant outfit today, and she may fit into it one more time. I grieve the passage of time for which I am utterly grateful.<br />
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And my sister's second son was born yesterday. For him I am utterly grateful, and for the gifts of God. Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-88696178679634391732016-03-10T14:44:00.000-05:002016-03-10T14:44:39.709-05:00I’ve been drifting along in the same stale shoesToday I continue to struggle with the inadequacy of everything I have to say. On the other hand I continue to SAY it. It’s the human impulse, to spurt out our innermost selves, to have them validated by the other, even a fictional other that may or may not exist. You, dear reader.
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<br />
Paul Simon sang: “Sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears.”
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<br />
Bob Dylan sang, angry:<br />
“Who killed Davey Moore? Why and what’s the reason for?<br />
It was destiny, it was fate, it was God’s will.”<br />
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Isaiah said: “Sing, barren woman, you who never bore a child; burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labor.”
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And Jesus said: “Woe is the child-bearing woman, the woman with a baby at her breast.” (Matthew 24:19)
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Why? Because in loving others we always open ourselves up to disappointment, death, grief?
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“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55)
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Here, here. In my heart.
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I find it easier and more comforting sometimes to believe that we are all just animals, and animals live and die by chance, by fate, by the exigencies of mutant DNA. Like I am driven forward inexorably not by my own force of will but by biology. Involuntarily, without a choice. Only characters in fiction can say no their biology. Us living creatures, as neurobiology increasingly suggests, are driven forward by the cortical response in our amygdala, forcing us to eat, to sleep, to mourn, to procreate despite the woes of procreation.
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I feel this cloying need for other people’s approval and validation and love, but only people I deem worthy, and when I receive it I no longer deem them worthy, like Woody Allen not wanting to be a member of any club that’d let him join. This endless neediness makes human relationships so hard, and my neediness itself seems another trick of my maladaptive evolutionary brain, an evolutionary need for a troglodytic tribe, a community, oxytocin. It’s easiest to think of it that way, that I am a slightly more complex monkey, 99 percent the same as a chimpanzee, pounding away on my cosmic keyboard. My overdeveloped consciousness yet another trick of mother evolution.
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<br />
Betsy Scholl, Maine poet laureate and my friend, says in her poem “Bass Flute”:<br />
“No talk here of <i>Meaning,</i><br />
it’s all <i>ing,</i><br />
raw urge that nudges the wall between<br />
music and noise.”<br />
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It is so, so much easier and more comforting to believe that nothing means anything. I used to question how pure materialists survived, because if I stopped believing in God and Holy Spirit and the noumenal I’d immediately off myself, because then what reason is there not to? But there is a reason, naturally, again—sheer biology. The force that through the green fuse drives the flower also drives me away from death, towards survival, all my ancestors, the force of their genetics driving me to live, live, breed, live, breathe my last breath far, far away from here.
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It is so comforting that I cannot believe it. It’s too easy. Another trick of the devil, convincing me he doesn’t exist, that he doesn’t live inside of us, inside of me, in my brain, in my head, in my endless rounds of self-recrimination, self-doubt, self-consciousness.
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“For the Lord has not given us a spirit of fear; but of love, and of power, and of a sound mind.”
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God is here, in the love Karl and I have for each other. In the love I have for my sister, distant in grief and space and time. In the love I have for those who have died.
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Today also I make bread, as I do often in winter. Mixed dry ingredients sit atop my fridge awaiting water, kneading, my careful hands. Also awaiting gluten, a needed ingredient for a primarily whole-wheat recipe I’m trying, which requires additional gluten to obtain a light, airy crumb, as opposed to the dense, doughy breads enriched with oatmeal and eggs and milk I tend to bake. It’s funny to me with all the hype about gluten-free that I’m waiting to make bread till I can find a place to buy extra gluten, which is, after all, just the protein in wheat. My mom used to always add an extra tablespoonful to her bread-machine recipes. Sonia and I used to joke around, when we went to the vegan cafe near her house, that we’d order our squash mac-and-cheese “with extra gluten,” but here I am, waiting around for extra gluten.
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The gluten is the protein that forms the architecture of the bread, inside which the yeast bubbles are able to solidify, grow, lift. The gluten is in the flour, milled from grain, grown from seed that each summer again sprouts. Winter turns to summer, snow melts to rain, the green fuse drives the germ to awake, to send forth its budding head. Jesus, of course, is our bread, the bread of life, and perhaps the Spirit is his gluten, allowing the God who lives within to bubble and grow.
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Each day layers on the next. Again I grieve. Again I surrender. Again I pray: give me today my daily bread.
Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-24279407750943388182016-02-03T15:22:00.001-05:002016-02-03T15:22:20.155-05:00Ice dance<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-F3PXu6NCxTU/VrJbZnsXmwI/AAAAAAAACZc/iwlxcN8U75o/s1600/IMG_8215.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-F3PXu6NCxTU/VrJbZnsXmwI/AAAAAAAACZc/iwlxcN8U75o/s320/IMG_8215.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
My baby nephew Stephen Andrew Henry died seven weeks ago today, after ten weeks of life. I have been fighting the urge to use words to reconcile myself to his death because his death is irreconcilable. Writing about it feels futile, as does everything else. Words are become powerless.<br /><br />“It’s all one,” said Keats. “We keep on breathing.” Or we don’t. Keats didn’t, at 26.<br /><br />My nephew didn’t, at 71 days.<br /><br />Someday I won’t anymore, you won’t. It’s not just the knowledge of the surety of death that this has brought home to me, but how asinine are most of my pursuits. I want to hold on to that crystal clarity I found in the days following his death, the purity of love I felt then, in honor of him.<br /><br />My intention to live only with hope from that moment on.<br /><br />But it infects everything I do and write now, how God allows bad things to happen to good people, how the problem of evil is the only problem that matters, how death is a living breathing presence behind each of our backs. And that makes all my inanity seem less important, all the ephemeral photographs of a New England summer.<br /><br />“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted.”<br /><br />All that’s left is an empty shape, an outline, a blank space, and if we heal then that ragged hole will be gone too and we’ll have nothing left of him. But words are the only weapon I have with which to fight the darkness.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NvHJBjseX6Y/VrJhUr8gFvI/AAAAAAAACZs/VMxv4wSueos/s1600/artspiegelman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="286" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NvHJBjseX6Y/VrJhUr8gFvI/AAAAAAAACZs/VMxv4wSueos/s400/artspiegelman.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art Spiegelman, <i>Maus</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-48922409966088540272015-10-22T14:16:00.000-04:002015-10-26T17:52:49.643-04:00Fingerboard Shelter to New York City to Providence to Marion, Massachusetts<div>Wednesday 24 June 2015</div><div>4.1 miles</div><div><br></div><div>Today I hiked past the Lemon Squeezer, which, if I'm honest, is the whole reason I decided to hike this section. In 2004, this was the first white blaze that I blue-blazed, thus, in my mind, invalidating my entire thru-hike. Not really, but kind of. When Big County and I came to this section, northbound, I couldn't get up the rock face. I took as many pictures as I could manage (I had to make it to the bus, after all) but they do not manage to convey how steep and challenging this boulder set in the middle of the trail is.</div><div><br></div><div>In 2004 I came here, to this patch, a rock I had to climb straight up, vertically. I tried it first with my pack on, throwing myself against the rock. That failed. Then I handed my pack up, to County, and tried it without the pack. Still no luck. I was not strong enough then, or now, to pull myself up vertically using just my arm strength. I never have been. In middle school, I was unable to sustain a ladder hold (the girlie version of a pull-up) for even a second. In elementary school, I did not play on monkey bars.</div><div><br></div><div>And there's no place to rest weight on a foot, although it is very hard to tell from the photographs. I could have asked County for help. He could have offered. Neither of us did those things—for me, asking for help during a physical challenge is as bad as failing at the physical challenge. In those days, the side trail around the rock, probably a ten-foot diversion, was white-blazed. In those days, I was a purist. I'd passed every single white blaze from Springer Mountain, Georgia, to Southfields, New York. To the Lemon Squeezer.</div><div><br></div><div>But I knew, and he knew, that the trail went up that boulder, not around its side. Today, in 2015, it's even more clear, and more well-marked: the side trail is blue-blazed (meaning it's not official Appalachian Trail) and marked "Easy Way." [Incidentally it's also clear the the Appalachian Trail, especially in New York, is built and maintained by sadists.] So if someone's hiking pure, it's get through the Lemon Squeezer or else.</div><div><br></div><div>I didn't in 2004. I took the side trail and its gimme white blaze. I was determined to succeed today. Every day of this three-week hike, if I'm honest, has been building to this moment. Back in Massachusetts I reminded people of the Lemon Squeezer, and for the last couple of days north-bounders have been warning me: it's going to be even worse for you, coming down. I didn't care. I was going to get down that boulder if I had to take all day doing it.</div><div><br></div><div>But I kept asking myself questions. Would it count if I couldn't do it with my pack on? What if I just threw myself down and fell—would that count? What if I couldn't do it southbound and took the side trail around, and then was able to pull myself up going north? That was what I missed the first time, but didn't that mean I was taking the easy way in another sense?</div><div><br></div><div>So I was eager with anticipation and nervousness and determination. And pain. My knees are getting worse, not better. I'm walking now with a noticeable and humiliating limp. When I come up on people on the trail, I double my speed, gritting my teeth, and falling back into my heaving monstrous limp once they go by, when no one can see.</div><div><br></div><div>I passed two north-bounders in the morning, hikers with daypacks, one in jeans—two brothers, it looked like, of vaguely mixed race—maybe half-Latino, or Arabic. We nodded and passed each other, and they looked at me with that suspicious look one would give a Martian. I'm mysterious out here—not just my all-black hiking spandex, when it's ninety degrees out; but my giant, ripped, oddly-shaped eleven-year-old pack; my barefoot-running shoes; my green glasses and the communist cap I bought at the Lao border. I gritted my teeth and pressed on.</div><div><br></div><div>Then the Lemon Squeezer. I came to it and barely had time to take some pictures and plan my attack when they came up behind me. I hadn't thought about them in hours—but of course if they were out for the day they'd have to hike out and turn around. Being watched is the worst—I find I'm able to attempt almost anything if I'm alone. Hiking by myself in North Carolina I climbed a hundred yards down a sheer cliff to retrieve a food-bag that had rolled off. In Aroostook by myself I spread out sewing projects and do cooking experiments and set up composting bins in weird arrangements without fear. But as soon as someone's watching—even a single person—I cringe in humiliation, fearing their criticism. Nowhere is this more true than in feats of physical strength. The best thing about backpacking is being able to walk alone, almost always.</div><div><br></div><div>And here I was, at the crucial point of my hike, a moment I'd been thinking about for eleven years. With two strangers watching.</div><div><br></div><div>I let them by.</div><div><br></div><div>"Go ahead," I said. "It'll take me a while."</div><div><br></div><div>The first, fitter and smaller, got down relatively easily, sliding halfway on his butt and then leaping. The bigger brother also did okay, relying more heavily on his rear end. He did panic a little, partway, making me feel better.</div><div><br></div><div>Then, they turned around to stay and watch me descend. I couldn't tell them to shove off, keep going, that I'd do it myself.</div><div><br></div><div>First I tried with my pack and when I realized immediately tit was impossible I sent it down. They offered to grab it, but I wanted to be able to do it all by myself. I hung the pack as far down as I could, and it was still a good two feet off the ground. So I dropped it, and it felt on its side and rolled over. No problem.</div><div><br></div><div>Then I positioned myself to come down, both men watching. I slid my butt to the point where I couldn't go any farther without dropping, my feet awkwardly braced on rock, my arms clinging above me. </div><div><br></div><div>I don't really remember getting down, or maybe I don't want to remember. I did say at one point:</div><div><br></div><div>"I'm going to die! I'm going to die!"</div><div><br></div><div>And one brother stepped forward and offered me a hand somehow and I made it down alive. Didn't break any bones.</div><div><br></div><div>But does it count? He helped. I didn't get down by myself. Did I pass that blaze? Can I say I walked that stretch of trail when I didn't? I fell down it, barely avoiding injuring myself—I didn't walk. I still haven't hiked it northbound, which was my original intention, to do it both directions, when I came to that point, so I could say that I'd hiked this section purely, both north- and southbound.</div><div><br></div><div>The two day-hikers raced ahead, embarrassed for all of us, maybe. That's how it felt. I limped on, barely able to walk. Flagged down my bus at the side of the road, rode to New York City while all the people held their handkerchiefs against their nose against my hiker scent. I didn't see them again. But I keep thinking about it.</div><div><br></div><div>In the Bible, angels often appear in pairs. They are nameless and disappear mysteriously. In one of my favorite Bible stories, a stranger appears alongside two disciples, on the road to Emmaus. He walks beside them, but they don't notice him, or don't think to wonder who he is.</div><div><br></div><div>I don't know what I would have done if they hadn't been there. I probably would have made it down, probably wouldn't have hurt myself, at least not more than I'm already hurt.</div><div><br></div><div>When I missed that section of trail in 2004, in some ways, it ruined my hike for me. After that I abandoned purism. We skipped miles of trail, including a big chunk of Vermont so that we could make it to Katahdin in time. In other ways, it was the most important part of my hike. I said that it was a gift, that I'd been set free, that what the AT does is cure a person of purism, because you're always going to break some rule for yourself. You'll slack-pack, or hike a section the wrong direction. The trail will be routed past a high-running river, or around a washout. Its difficulty and length is the reason it's so important, because purism, in some sense, becomes impossible.</div><div><br></div><div>But this missed blaze haunted me more than any of the others, because this was my breaking point. And now I come to it again, and this time again, my desire for perfection is flouted, subverted by the appearance of mysterious strangers. </div><div><br></div><div>Remembering those late weeks in Maine, almost to Katahdin—how in pain I was. How much I suffered. And how I damaged my body in ways that are only beginning to manifest now, injuring my knees and shoulders. I did that because of my clenched-jaw stubbornness that refuses to ask for help, refuses to accept help, and refuses to accept my own weakness. It was good that I skipped that blaze, because we made it to Katahdin. The handful of miles we missed are always going to be there if I want to hike them, and if I'd forced myself to hike them then, I could have hurt myself to the point where I had to abandon the thru-hike entirely. I was completely unable to listen to my body then. I didn't know how.</div><div><br></div><div>Maybe God's trying to tell me something. It's okay to be weak. It's okay to be imperfect. It's okay to be in pain. It's okay to accept help. What's not okay is insistence on perfection, in myself or in anyone else.</div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aBU3Caolf2s/Vi6gsu9Pw1I/AAAAAAAACYs/hdho1HE37Io/s1600/P1050003-769645.jpeg"><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aBU3Caolf2s/Vi6gsu9Pw1I/AAAAAAAACYs/hdho1HE37Io/s320/P1050003-769645.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_6210077626570097490" /></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-POTsfdfwoHc/Vi6gtP4iaxI/AAAAAAAACY4/on4YrBqqLS8/s1600/P1050007-772146.jpeg"><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-POTsfdfwoHc/Vi6gtP4iaxI/AAAAAAAACY4/on4YrBqqLS8/s320/P1050007-772146.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_6210077635408718610" /></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KYOBlEIf7yw/Vi6gt3niM2I/AAAAAAAACZE/CZNKP9THrj8/s1600/P1050008-775166.jpeg"><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KYOBlEIf7yw/Vi6gt3niM2I/AAAAAAAACZE/CZNKP9THrj8/s320/P1050008-775166.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_6210077646074819426" /></a></div><div><br></div>Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-64793039968354671332015-10-21T23:37:00.000-04:002015-10-26T17:52:27.838-04:00West Mountain to Fingerboard Shelter<div>9.1 miles</div><div>23 June 2015</div><div><br></div><div>My last day on the trail. Today was excruciating—my knees and feet and shoulders are in pain—and I'm feeling fatigued and I had chills all day and I'm worried about Lyme even though I haven't found a bulls-eye rash or a deer tick on me since Connecticut. I'm at the shelter tonight with two flippers, two Gamers, and the first south-bounder I've met, Trek. Figures we'd meet on the last day—like me, he's a former thru-hiker out for not the whole trail but a section. But he's going all the way to Springer, starting somewhere in New Hampshire. A much longer section than mine, almost over.</div><div><br></div><div>It's a good group. Crocrocket, a Gamer, packed in some beers and I made a hooked up chili ramen with tuna, using up as much of my leftover food as possible.</div><div><br></div><div>The Lyme thing is really weird. Maybe it's just groupthink, or paranoia, since everyone's worried about it, but I really did feel especially fatigued today. But that's the joke about it, that all the symptoms mimic trail exhaustion. I still feel so tired that I feel like I could fall asleep right now as I am writing.</div><div><br></div><div>I'm unsure if I should get tested when I get back to Marion or if I should have my knees checked out—they're really scaring me with the level of pain I'm feeling. It's tough to feel motivated when I don't feel like I ever had my shoulder pain treated seriously three years ago and I never ended up with an MRI. I have a hard time convincing people of the legitimacy of my repetitive stress injuries, although I don't know if it's not to be expected after 3000 trail miles. That's not bragging, or an excuse; just acknowledging that I spent a significant chunk of my twenties walking, and my joints are beginning to show the signs of it.</div><div><br></div><div>Or maybe it's Lyme.</div><div><br></div><div>It scares me, though, especially when I've been falling in love again so thoroughly with hiking, and convincing myself I could do the Long Trail later this summer, or head north to hike the Hundred-Mile Wilderness with the north-bounders I've met. But it's my last night camping, my last night in a shelter, my last night with my knees propped on my rolled-up tent. The last night with hiker stink, the last night outdoors. Tomorrow I'll be back inside—that's if I can flag down a bus to New York City on the side of the road.</div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IOBhvhgRzMQ/Vi6gnN4WqPI/AAAAAAAACYg/xJ0fM9UoX_4/s1600/P1040997-747839.jpeg"><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IOBhvhgRzMQ/Vi6gnN4WqPI/AAAAAAAACYg/xJ0fM9UoX_4/s320/P1040997-747839.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_6210077531791862002" /></a></div>Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-15548284881499040772015-10-15T13:22:00.000-04:002015-10-15T15:04:45.511-04:00Graymoor Friary to West Mountain Shelter<div>22 June 2015</div><div>12.9 miles</div><div><br></div><div>Turns out yesterday I didn't go far enough, as usual. I went far enough today, maybe too far. Maybe I'd have been better off camping by myself at one of these lovely camping sites on top of the mountain, closer both today and tomorrow to water. I like camping by myself but I also like sleeping with other people at the shelter.</div><div><br></div><div>I was really excited about today's shelter—.6 off of the trail on a ridge-line with spectacular views of the New York City skyline—but I set up in the corner where I can support my battered knees on my rolled-up tent and I can't even see the view. Today was too exhausting for me to enjoy it anyway, and there's no water to cook and I'm dehydrated and feeling sick. I was afraid I'd diarrhea or vomit on the way here. I'm not eating dinner. It doesn't appeal.</div><div><br></div><div>Maybe this means I am sick. I have two more days of hiking and then I have to flag down a bus to New York City at the trail crossing. Supposedly it comes by. I don't even care. I'll wait till dark, then camp there if it doesn't come. I have enough food, I can yogi water if I need to, and there's a hotel in the nearby town.</div><div><br></div><div>There's no water at the shelter here, and unlike the north-bounders who were able to collect water within a half-mile as they climbed the ridge, I had to carry my pitiful two liters all the way from drinking fountains at the base of Bear Mountain, four miles and across two summits. It makes sense to hoard my water for morning.</div><div><br></div><div>I'm with two guys tonight—No Hurry, a flip-flopper from Harpers Ferry whom I really like for his lackadaisical pace and great trail attitude, and Skipper, a competitive sailor, who was thrilled to hear about Spirit, our double-ended cutter. Not that I'll be living aboard anytime soon. I feel hypocritical about that, like everything, even my hiking. Sure, I made it farther than any of these people have yet, all the way to Maine, but I did it at a feeble eight-month pace. Acting like I know anything about backpacking or thru-hiking is making me feel like a liar.</div><div><br></div><div>In leaving the trail, in leaving this peripatetic outdoor life, where there are no restrictions or requirements on me other than following the blazes, I'm afraid that I'm going back into depression, back into the mire. Here I have autonomy and purpose and will. In regular life I lose all of these things. I do regain the people in my life, my family and friends. And I do need people and their love. Don't I?</div><div><br></div><div>So last night I trekked into the Graymoor Friary, remembering the layout from 2004 and happy that it was still a trail stop. It was a 14-mile day, and by the end I was nearly in tears from the pain. Although the bouldering is not so bad as in Massachusetts, every step onto stone jars the cartilage in my legs, feeling like bone grinding on bone. Often I can hear it, a sound of crunching and snapping. Every day the pain is worse, every day the last two miles more intense.</div><div><br></div><div>So when I got to the Friary yesterday, at the end of my day, I was ecstatic. I followed the blue blazes to the field where I was told I could camp. But there was no one else there. How odd, I thought, since I'm in the thick of the pack, passing about twenty north-bounders a day. Someone told me there had been fourteen camped here the day before. But it was almost dark, and I went hunting for water, desperately thirsty (most of the water sources in New York are contaminated with coliform bacteria), and I was annoyed that I couldn't find it, since it's one of the reasons people stop here. I trekked up concrete walkways to the picnic tables and pavilion where I'd slept two nights in 2004, and then farther up, to a small chapel, where a priest was adjusting flowers or something. I nodded at him but went right to the tap without saying anything and filled all my water bottles. He looked at me oddly but I thought it was my spandex mini-shorts and at that point I just wanted to stop putting pressure on my legs. So I went down and camped and cooked by myself, in my wet tent, and by the time I was done it was dark and I slept.</div><div><br></div><div>In the morning, troops of hikers started walking past me as I packed. Evidently the actual ball-field for camping was a few more blue blazes down the road, where there was a shower and plenty of water and a lot of camped north-bounders. So as usual I gave up too soon, and that's why the priest gave me that look—another scantily clad female invading the sanctity of his monastery, the free services they provide for hikers deemed not good enough. Maybe I'm feeling guilt for 2004, when we zeroed here and they still fed hikers, the last year they did. I worry that we were the reason they stopped, late-season lazy-ass hikers taking advantage of their hospitality, and now I was again. His face, and my exhausted disgust as I filled up water, keeps haunting me.</div><div><br></div><div>But then again I like to blame myself for everything. So tonight I was determined to go far enough, all the way to the shelter, rather than stopping .1 or .2 ahead, as I've done so many times, losing the satisfaction of reaching an intended destination. But my legs are shot. My knees are getting worse.</div><div><br></div><div>The last two miles of the day were excruciating, as always. After the final waterless climb, the trail stretched for a mile along this gorgeous and austere ridge piled with rocks. I limped up and down, each step jarring, completely unable to enjoy the constant gorgeous scenery, the lichen-splattered rocks amid tufts of grass and dwarfed trees. Bewildering blue-blazed trails led off mysteriously, making me doubt if I hadn't already passed the shelter.</div><div><br></div><div>Then the shelter sign was missing, and I had to trust the arrow that someone had marked with a Sharpie. Then another .6 miles of climbs and tumbles down granite boulders, not even knowing if this extended blue blaze was the right shelter trail. That last .6 off-trail felt like six miles, up and down rocky outcroppings, with strangely blazed blue and orange and yellow trails criss-crossing the unmarked shelter trail and no water.</div><div><br></div><div>I could have stopped earlier and camped alone again, but I pressed on, and on, and on, and actually arrived at the promised shelter, seeing the hammocks strung up in the trees, smelling the woodsmoke. In these last miles I find myself constant playing, please God, please God. I am praying for a glimpse of a slanted roof, the whiff of privy that means other humans. Now that I'm here I'm not sure the .6 was worth it. And I'm thirsty.</div><div><br></div><div>I'm happy I only have two more days, for the sake of my body, but I'm nervous about the bus ride to NY and thence to Providence or Boston. I wish I was continuing, because I love life out here, but I really think my body can't stand it. On the trail, I am whole. Minus my knees.</div><div><br></div><div>So here, tonight, for one more night, I am home—hungry and dehydrated and sick—but home. In a three-sided shelter, with stinky strangers and mosquitoes and no view, carrying everything I need.</div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DTWA9YfnF9w/Vh_4zpuzqmI/AAAAAAAACYI/6Nr-2-dnjAc/s1600/P1040981-785512.jpeg"><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DTWA9YfnF9w/Vh_4zpuzqmI/AAAAAAAACYI/6Nr-2-dnjAc/s320/P1040981-785512.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_6205952377799027298" /></a></div>Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-35777695723417821702015-08-17T15:47:00.002-04:002015-08-17T15:47:45.827-04:00Aroostook County, Maine<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Last days in Massachusetts, summer at Mary's Pond</i></td></tr>
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It's probably not obvious that I've been slowly posting my log from my Appalachian Trail hike, which lasted three weeks and took me to about the mid-point of New York state on the AT. Then Big County (K.) and I took a dory trip around Buzzard’s Bay—a week of camping and rowing and chilling out in the sun and on the water. Then a week at camp with his brother and family, and then a week camping up the coast of Maine with some of our friends—one couple we know from the Appalachian Trail in 2004 and other County friends.<br /><br />I believe I’ve spent more time in a tent than in a bed in the last two months—which is exactly as summer should be, in my opinion. But we finally pulled into the two-year overgrown driveway on Snow Road, early and unexpected, and our neighbor called the state trooper because we hadn’t been there in so long. Now we’re figuring out what to do with two years of burdock and goldenrod and fallen trees. K. is hand-scything the lawn and I’m piling it in the compost bin. I’d like to pretend I’m hand-baling hay, but I am not that skilled.<br /><br />We are back in Aroostook itself. Which means no internet, except at the super-slow library. Last time we were here I eventually relented to $60 a month satellite internet, but I’m trying to resist this time. There’s a peculiar kind of silence in an internet-free zone. More and more I find that when I have it I can escape into the internet as into a kind of void. And now that I don’t have it, I actually want to make use of it for things like pictures, words.<br /><br />If that’s what it takes. Franzen allegedly disables his wireless cards so that they can’t access the internet, going so far as to stick an ethernet cable into its port and cut it off, then sanding down the port so the computer can never again access the internet. I have that stillness here. Silence and stillness. As if the County is a time capsule, or a time machine, taking me back into the past. The house, other than accumulated mouse crap, is as it was.<br /><br />I’ll continue to email in posts as I have internet access, maybe filling in some gaps in the past few months, maybe not. I think of this as a literal world-wide-web log, a ‘blog, for myself in the future as much as for anyone else, and I want at least my anniversary hike to be preserved. I’ve been adding links to my 2004 hike, too—again, for myself as much as for anyone else—it’s been so fun for me to go back and read those posts, to remember who I was then. So much of it I remembered, and so much I forgot.<br />
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Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-50863884260530004152015-06-21T12:11:00.000-04:002015-10-07T15:24:34.875-04:00Clarence Fahnestock State Park to Graymoor Friary13.8 miles
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Everything in my tent is wet. I actually did an excellent job pitching for the rain last night and stayed perfectly dry through the tropical storm until I tried to pack up this morning. I knew I had to leave early, before the rain stopped, because thirteen miles is a big day for me, my second biggest, and I needed all of the daylight hours. But that meant leaving before all of the sensible thru-hikers, and packing in the rain.
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I have not mastered packing in the rain. I don't know if anyone has, which is why my thru-hiking rule always was: never start in the rain. You can hike in the rain, but never start in the rain. Especially do not pack in the rain.
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But I was so excited about this long day to Graymoor, where we stayed in 2004, and I'd planned it so long—I didn't see how bad it could be. I'd keep the rainfly over my gear. It wouldn't be that bad.
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It was. Everything except the rainfly was dry when I started, and in the process of packing, everything got wet. This doesn't just mean a wet camp—it also means an exhaustingly heavy pack for this long day. You may not think that much moisture makes a difference, but it certainly does. The thirteen miles meant no time to stop and spread things in the sun (which came out, on cue, about a mile into my hike). I didn't think the terrain'd be that bad today, but as always it is relentless, and the last climb nearly killed me. So tonight, I sleep with clammy feet and wrinkled toes. Did I learn my lesson? Probably not. Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-36781824920947132092015-06-20T23:33:00.000-04:002015-10-07T15:11:16.126-04:00RPH Shelter to Clarence Fahnestock State Park6.9 miles
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>RPH Shelter interior--amazing how I remembered this shelter as grubby and everyone kept going on and on about how nice it was. It was nice. The pizza was nicer.</i></td></tr>
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So I write tonight as I have not written since my beginning night, camped alone in my tent, lit by red headlamp. Tonight the highway croons to my left. I am camped at a New York state park on the first summer weekend. How odd that I have to come to a campground crowded with car campers for solitude.</div>
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That's how crowded the trail is. Even today, at the concession stand, I met four thru-hikers. None wanted to stay here, close to the highway, with no shelter. It's supposed to rain tonight, and already it is raining.</div>
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I was lured by the state park's hot shower, not by camping alone. But I showered and pitched in the gravelly, trashy spot reserved for AT hikers, all alone, finally and for once. Rain pattered and I zipped myself in, alone with my books and notebook and leftover pizza. But even then at dusk, two hikers zoomed up, shouting hello to my zipped tent, guessing which of their friends was here.</div>
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It's just me, a lowly Southbounder. They looked cowed and went and camped at the other site. I don't mind, really. Maybe civilization is the only place to be alone anymore.</div>
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<a href="http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=82006">[Zeroing in the same section in 2004.]</a></div>
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Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-67010442854550880642015-06-19T16:48:00.000-04:002015-10-07T15:08:32.274-04:00Morgan Stewart to RPH Shelter9.9 miles
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Morgan Stewart Shelter, this morning's starting place</i></td></tr>
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Tonight a man at the shelter questioned the legitimacy of my relationship and also told me I am too old to have children. I have been looking forward to this shelter, one I remember well from 2004, one from which you may order pizza. This gentleman, August, offers to split a pizza with me. The other guy here, Gas, has already eaten Chinese. August has written 24 books for sale on Amazon. I am, also, a writer.
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I mention that my partner and I are rebuilding a sailboat.
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He says: why do you use that word, partner? I hear that and think—he lets the sentence drop, implying that I may be gay.
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I say: I like the gender ambiguity of it.
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I wish I had said: why does it matter if my partner is male or female?
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He says: there must be something wrong with him.
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He says: why not boyfriend?
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I say: because there's a deeper level of commitment. And implied in partnership is equality.
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I say that I see in marriage after marriage a lack of equality. With women performing a greater share of housework and child-rearing, and also a greater percentage of sacrifice: of dreams, goals, ambition. I say: I've had friends divorce after less than a year. I say: how can you can what they have a marriage and what I have not? Maybe marriage is something that take a lifetime to accomplish, and one doesn't know if one is truly married till one is dead. Maybe marrying, like love, is a verb.
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Gas chimes in: his 33-year-old marriage is a partnership.
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I am perhaps defensive. I do not know if I always believe these things that I say. I know that part of me, the part of me indoctrinated by Disney and my evangelical family, still believes that my relationship carries no legitimacy because it does not have a certificate of marriage. But I know that I believe in commitment and partnership. And also I see the sacrifices that all women in relationships make.
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Then he asks my age.
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I tell the truth. I don't think I've managed to lie about my age yet in my life. I may be living like a 27-year-old but I am 37.
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He says: I guess you don't need to worry about children then.
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He apologizes under his next breath. It still stings.
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Even not knowing whether I ever wanted children. Not knowing now. Feeling that because of gender discrimination, I was never allowed to know what I want. I still don't know how to know what I want. I don't know if I want children because I've always been told that I must. I push against that, still. As I am being informed about my own life by yet another man, a man explicit in saying he'd want to provide an income while his wife took care of house and kin.
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I am angry. These things make me angry.
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I tell him about this study: even mothers watching their daughters check their cell phones twice as often as when they are watching sons. I brush my teeth and go to bed.Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-38758972515448154852015-06-18T12:18:00.013-04:002022-09-11T11:00:39.221-04:00Telephone Pioneers to Morgan Stewart Shelter<div>
7.8 miles</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>That's the trail, over and between the rocks--an example of the kind of rocks I deal with, and also maybe a metaphor for the rocky path ahead as we deal with climate change? Or am I stretching it?</i></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i> </i></td></tr>
</tbody></table> </div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxmn7OjotKnopcHVebEl2F7AjVADl6uXzcl606BZogx2RX0Q_7Vmv5gVhTpq_Rq6ViVf1P9xLBCD6_CMLO2VDttmw8OS60wAZ3iEr4-Yhhi0J5Qx_rSo7vi9ksD4SBFe0yymdzG9Iki9hSh_2LIPW4P-WtatBjnvEROF6pXKlZNwhfG8B3Qw/s1818/0941463-R1-E001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1818" data-original-width="1228" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxmn7OjotKnopcHVebEl2F7AjVADl6uXzcl606BZogx2RX0Q_7Vmv5gVhTpq_Rq6ViVf1P9xLBCD6_CMLO2VDttmw8OS60wAZ3iEr4-Yhhi0J5Qx_rSo7vi9ksD4SBFe0yymdzG9Iki9hSh_2LIPW4P-WtatBjnvEROF6pXKlZNwhfG8B3Qw/s320/0941463-R1-E001.jpg" width="216" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Prison art on the wall at Telephone Pioneers Shelter in 2004. I was hoping it would still be there, but it wasn't.</i></td></tr></tbody></table> </div><div>I find that people have one of several reactions when they concede that yes, climate change is happening. They say:</div>
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1. It's too late to do anything, so why try? We may as well just party and enjoy civilization now.</div>
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2. All of the signs of climate change parallel those of biblical apocalypse, so climate change is good news, because it will make Jesus come back faster.</div>
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3. Or this one: even if there is a mass extinction event, and 90 percent of people die, it'll be good for the earth. It'll be a good thing if seven billion people die—only the strong will survive, and the world will remake itself post-apocalyptically.</div>
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This last one is the one I believe that future generations will find most objectionable. After all, it will be them that die.</div>
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I continue to find myself talking about climate change all of the time on the trail. Referring people to my blog. As of today, I've had three nights (or more) of climate conversation in a row.</div>
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The first was with an environmental-science major named Dakota, one of the Iowa Girls, who agreed with me about the dire fate of the forest. Recent science suggests that trees may react very badly to a projected three-degree rise in temperature, dehydrating much more quickly than people.</div>
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[<a href="http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/17230/Climate%20change%20and%20forest%20disturbances.pdf?sequence=1">http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/17230/Climate%20change%20and%20forest%20disturbances.pdf?sequence=1</a>]</div>
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"Yeah," she said. "All of the trees are dead."</div>
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The next night with Macklemore, the nihilist audio engineer.</div>
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Tonight it's Fizzles, a northbound Nevada hydrologist. I told her I try to write about these things, although I don't know how to publish what I write. I want to write for Christians, to remind them that faith means action here on earth. That a human mass extinction means seven billion souls dead. I want to write to explain to believers how faith and science are compatible, that evolution is a form of creation.</div>
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And I want to write articles for scientists, telling them how to convince a layperson of the value of their work. To help ordinary people understand and *believe* the science of climate change. To explain to ordinary people the vast amounts of innovative technology that already exists to solve the problem, to save the trees and our grandchildren. That we can switch to sustainable energy with little loss to our standard of living, if we can manage massive economic dislocation. I want to explain the history of revolutionary movements, that change is possible through activism, even if only a small percentage of people become active. That we are the sleeping giant, but that we can awake. That we've awoken in the past. That the ship of state is driven by us.</div>
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But where to publish these articles? The only places that publish about climate change are leftwing or green magazines whose readership is already convinced and does nothing. Conservative Christian politics has been co-opted by rightwing conservatives and is in bed with the enemy, Big Oil. </div>
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I said, to Fizzles, that Christians believe that our life—each individual life—has meaning. That gives us a reason to fight against mass destruction, against death. I believe that Christians are the only ones who can combat the sheer Darwinism of that belief system, that says the world'd be better off after a mass die-off.</div>
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I just can't manage to be that much of a nihilist. Really, is everyone else? And then I think maybe I am, that maybe all of the people who believe that the planet needs it are correct, that maybe even God is saying that we need it. In the face of this argument, I find myself quailing, my faith uncertain. Is human death really something to be prevented? Or have we inflicted so much harm that we need a Dying to bring other life back?</div>
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Can I really believe that? Would I have said that before the Holocaust? Is this Holocaust different because it will not be just one particular race extinguished?</div>
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But it will be. It'll be the poor people in the global south, who already die in boats. There are already climate refugees. We just don't care.</div>
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That was one new answer Dakota gave me: it's because the people who will die are poor. It's the same problem humans have always had. We've never cared about the poor or the weak.</div>
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Christians are specifically commanded to care for the poor and the weak. We are commanded to protect the least of these. It's why we took the lead on abolition, and why I believe, eventually, we'll take the lead in fighting carbon dioxide emissions.</div>
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The fundamental problem is not carbon dioxide or climate change or drought or water shortages or blizzards or hurricanes. The fundamental problem is our ability to talk back to powerful oligarchies. Speaking truth to power has always been the problem. As Buddha did. As Jesus did. As Francis did. As Luther did. As Gandhi did. As King did. As Mandela did.</div>
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Even the French and Soviet revolutions did. Successful and unsuccessful revolutions prove the lesson of history, that people have power. People choose to believe that they do not, because it's easier. And my faith gives me hope that the Spirit may yet animate us to make change for the better. To take to the streets. That there is still time.</div>
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Fizzles and I discuss awhile, finding common ground. I explain my Christianity in the face of her skepticism, my faith the only weapon I have against nihilism. My faith is the only thing that gives me hope for change, my belief that God gifted human beings not just with souls but also with ingenuity, which is why we have science. And faith and science together can give us solutions.</div>
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And then Hare, another thru-hiker, comes over. He's a Christian from Montana. He believes that the droughts and wars mean the Rapture is coming, and we don't need to worry about stopping people from dying. We just need to convince all the people who are going to die to go not to hell but to heaven. I say: but what about justice? What about Christ's kingdom here on earth?</div>
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[<a href="http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=82072">Hiking the same section in 2004</a>, much less concerned about climate change.]</div>
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Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-5174035108048412942015-06-17T12:34:00.000-04:002015-10-07T14:46:49.131-04:00Webatuck to Telephone Pioneers Shelter<div>
10.3 miles</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JEfeZ-JxE6k/Vf7mQgPudFI/AAAAAAAACW8/LNsg8l_hD5s/s1600/P1040942-750364.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="400" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_6196643308516570194" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JEfeZ-JxE6k/Vf7mQgPudFI/AAAAAAAACW8/LNsg8l_hD5s/s400/P1040942-750364.jpeg" width="300" /></a>Again I'm at a shelter completely crowded with people. Many flip-floppers. The Appalachian Trail Conference is evidently encouraging flip-flop thru-hikes as a way to combat congestion in Georgia at the beginning of the trail and this is supposed to be the flip-flop bubble. They're all talking about how awful Pennsylvania is and I just think that means they haven't done any hard states yet.</div>
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Which is sour of me, I know. Tonight the shelter is full up, five women and one man. Me, another section hiker, three flip-floppers, and a Gamer, the single dude. He is doing thirty miles a day and has red nodules on his feet. I sleep with my head at his feet, because I prefer my head against the wall. But they smell no worse than my own socks, stuffed in my clothes sack as a pillow. I don't mind hiker funk.</div>
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The flippers talk about throwing all of their clothes out of their tent because they smell so bad. I know I shouldn't resent them, that they are just baby hikers still in the first quarter of their trail. One of them is planning to exit the trail as it crosses the rail line to New York City, to return home to his doctor in Pennsylvania to check for Lyme disease. Because he is more fatigued every day and his joints hurt.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It's become a joke on the trail, how the symptoms of hiking exactly parallel that of Lyme. I don't joke about Lyme, though—I think people *should* get checked out, and I check myself multiple times daily for deer ticks. But I wonder whether this man'll get back on the trail. I wonder how many of these flippers will make it through Connecticut.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I tell them every state is harder than the last. I let them listen to the crunching as I bend my destroyed knees. The guy with 1400 miles under his belt obsessively probes his feet, ignoring us. We sleep together, listening to breathing and creaks and people rolling over.</div>
<div>
</div>
Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-7903899324544206542015-06-16T16:09:00.000-04:002015-10-07T14:40:36.162-04:00Ten Mile River Lean-to to Webatuck Shelter (Wiley)4.1 miles<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BSKcRCJmtrY/VfM0Idc6SeI/AAAAAAAACWg/Xi71RHDmYSA/s1600/P1040937.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BSKcRCJmtrY/VfM0Idc6SeI/AAAAAAAACWg/Xi71RHDmYSA/s400/P1040937.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>View from the shelter in the morning</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.trailgallery.com/photos/2085/tj2085_110604_192040_71523.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.trailgallery.com/photos/2085/tj2085_110604_192040_71523.jpg" height="270" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Crossing the Connecticut-New York border (in 2004)</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
My idea for today was again, knowing thunderstorms were forecast for the afternoon, to do a short-mileage day and camp at the first shelter. Really, I am hiking shelter-to-shelter, trying to stay at each one. For no reason other than my own sense of completion, originally thinking I’d sleep at each shelter I missed in my thru-hiker. But I missed so many.<br />
<br />
But I think I can take the afternoon off—read, write, chill out. Spend some time with the birds. As I write one flies across in front of me, angry that I am sitting too close to its nest. I hope I am not keeping the last avian of its kind from warming its young. When I go and visit at the picnic table with another thru-hiker hiking through, the bird poops on my open notebook. I swear it is intentional.<br />
<br />
The barrage of hikers is relentless. Again, no solo afternoon in the woods. I hole up by the shelter with my notebook and my pen and let the hikers talk among themselves. But they are so close, I can hear every minute of their conversation. And conversations among hikers can be asinine and repetitive, the same stories told again and again. Here’s a sample, between two section hikers and a Nobo. The section hikers are still shocked at regular trail exigencies, like their friend, who:<br />
<br />
Section-hikers: …dropped us off. He’d hiked hundred miles before and I had to get him in my car to take him back to his. It was just randomly parked somewhere!<br />
<br />
[silence]<br />
<br />
SH: When did you start?<br />
<br />
Thru-hiker: March 28.<br />
<br />
SH: Man you’re *through* hiking.<br />
<br />
[silence]<br />
<br />
SH: Have you seen anything outrageous?<br />
<br />
TH: There’s this guy Hawkeye that’s always drunk. No filter. Whenever anyone sees him, he’s sitting in the trail, doing shots, not actually doing anything ever. He’s like, never hiking. When I first met him I was so scared. I thought, this is the guy that’s going to kill me.<br />
<br />
SH: Do you carry a tent with you?<br />
<br />
TH: Yeah. I feel like shelters are for those people who need it more. Even if it’s crappy out, I use my tent.<br />
<br />
SH: Cool.<br />
<br />
TH: I figure my stuff’s wet already.<br />
<br />
[silence]<br />
<br />
TH: You guys work in the city?<br />
<br />
SH1: I live and work in the city, but my brother here—he—<br />
<br />
SH2: I’m just out for this.<br />
<br />
SH1: Where are you from?<br />
<br />
TH: Ohio, mostly.<br />
<br />
SH1: I’ve heard good things about Columbus.<br />
<br />
[TH goes to get water.]<br />
<br />
SH1: Look at this.<br />
<br />
SH2: Oh wow. [evaluating their packs]<br />
<br />
SH1: I mean, they’re shoved in as much as I can get ‘em.<br />
<br />
…<br />
<br />
SH1: [trying to convince his brother to go to the next shelter] It’s just at the top of a mountain so we have to climb a little bit…<br />
<br />
#<br />
<br />
So that gives you an idea of the kind of mind-numbing dialog that happens again and again around shelters and their picnic tables. I get sick of it. I try to distance myself but am still distracted. Later, I go and speak to the thru-hiker, Superglue. We speak closer to the same language, but not that much. There’s a noticeable relaxation from the thru-hikers when I tell them I hiked in 04. They don’t have to explain themselves or their gear, I know what they’re going through. Or I try to remember.<br />
<br />
He is tired, in the zone, on his way towards *miles.* He ran cross-country ever since middle school, eighty miles a week for probably the last ten years he tells me. I can think of worse ways to train for the Appalachian Trail.<br />
<br />
I say: you mean every step is not pain for you?<br />
<br />
He looks at me quizzically. I think if my feet didn’t get tired, I could go all night, he says. He is doing consistent 20+ days. Maybe this is why I do four.<br />
<br />
And then that night another of my now three-in-a-row conversations about climate change. Tonight is with Macklemore, a Louisiana audio engineer, who bought all his gear at a thrift shop. As a solution he proposed an all-agrarian society, with a barter economy. But his mindset is nihilistic. Nothing we do matters. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow all the trees die.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.trailjournalshttp//www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=82150.com/entry.cfm?id=82150">[Hiking the same section in 2004.]</a>Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-49796097441146807672015-06-15T15:25:00.000-04:002015-09-11T15:59:19.885-04:00Mount Algo to Ten Mile River Lean-to9.4 miles<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VV3HZWVLkpc/VedMe42NFxI/AAAAAAAACWA/Y74EZESZjpA/s1600/P1040932.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="244" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VV3HZWVLkpc/VedMe42NFxI/AAAAAAAACWA/Y74EZESZjpA/s320/P1040932.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Misty, rainy vista</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Today I walked in the rain for two hours, breaking my own rule: never start in the rain. Maybe this is a difference between section- and thru-hiking, too—sometimes rain-walking is worth it for the section hiker. For me, to have some time alone in the woods, my stated purpose. And my gear is resoundingly waterproof, so it’d be only myself getting wet.<br />
<br />
Also the thrill of it, the experience, because it is a novelty and not drudgery. And in the misty morning, a deer, a doe, jumped across the trail in front of me. Vistas appeared and disappeared in wreaths of fog. I forget about just how present I am with nature out here, or forget to write about it, what with my complaints about mileage and thru-hikers. Still, I’m in the wild, above the highway roar that occasionally comes from a thousand feet below.<br />
<br />
I surprise deer sometimes, hiking without poles. I seek all-red birds, black-and-white striped birds (Baltimore orioles?). On a sunny day, a garter snake slithered across my feet, surprised. He felt weightless, like he floated on air.<br />
<br />
Tonight I camp with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euchre">Euchre</a>, from Michigan (natch), and Superman, who does a headstand atop every mountain. We discuss gear and climate change, one of many conversations I’ve been having with fellow hikers about climate change. I feel like an evangelist or a prophet, someone obnoxious at least, how I bring every conversation back to it. But it is inescapable, in my own mind and in my written and spoken dialog. I can’t stop thinking or writing or talking about it.<br />
<br />
The afternoon, after the rain cleared, was lovely hiking weather, and since I packed in a shelter and camp in a shelter, my gear is completely dry.Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-80382480521979090342015-06-14T23:00:00.000-04:002015-09-02T15:00:29.977-04:00Kent, Connecticut, to Mount Algo Lean-to1.8 miles<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WeFDHjRlZxE/Vd9RU-lV39I/AAAAAAAACVo/fbwDplWP7Dg/s1600/P1040922.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WeFDHjRlZxE/Vd9RU-lV39I/AAAAAAAACVo/fbwDplWP7Dg/s400/P1040922.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>A single white blaze, preserved and framed, in Kent</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I camped in town last night, camped for a second time in someone’s backyard. I ate breakfast by myself at the diner bar like a truck driver. I walked to the grocery store in bright sun in my black long underwear like it was normal, appalled by the prices in New England yuppiedom. I bought more camp food than I probably need—and not enough snacks—and carried it back to my backpack and tent and repacked.<br />
<br />
My idea for today was to do a mile out of town, camp at the first shelter, to spend the afternoon chilling out and reading, eating a sandwich I bought in town, but when I got there someone was already there. A 20-year-old blonde girl who’d already been camped at the shelter for a week, waiting for a visit and a new backpack. She was thru-hiking too, from Delaware Water Gap to Katahdin, theoretically, in white jeans and with a Cabela’s pack and a pink Walmart tent. Hiking really does take all kinds, and it’s interesting to see how far different kinds of people can get with various kinds of gear.<br />
<br />
So my plan for a lovely solo afternoon was foiled. As much as I enjoy meeting all of these people, I had envisioned more alone time. I’m beginning to think that for alone time I’d need the Continental Divide Trail, or Baxter State Park in winter. Solitude is always more challenging than I think it is—both to find and to keep.<br />
<br />
At dusk, three more hikers pulled in, another group of three twenty-year-old girls, these ones bedecked in ultralight gear, with tiny backpacks and going at a bruising pace, a long section but not a thru-hike. Again, they’re racing to Katahdin—21 miles today and seventeen, including a town stop, planned for tomorrow. It was cool that, for the night, it was an all-female shelter, and cooler still that the fact was not particularly remarkable. But still, I find myself craving those golden sunlit afternoons, alone in nature, that I was looking for.Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-77909561033307763182015-06-13T14:16:00.000-04:002015-08-27T13:58:17.429-04:00Stewart Hollow Brook Lean-to to Kent, Connecticut<div>
7.2 miles</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dZLdarxSk20/Vd9GUxIDliI/AAAAAAAACVc/DofU0Vtp3Ls/s1600/P1040917-790534.jpeg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="342" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_6187741735628805666" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dZLdarxSk20/Vd9GUxIDliI/AAAAAAAACVc/DofU0Vtp3Ls/s400/P1040917-790534.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Backpack along trail</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
A good day. Even in old thru-hiking times when I could do a short day into town but still kill some miles and get things accomplished in town, it was a good day. In trail parlance these are "near-0s," close to being "zeros," days with zero mileage accomplished. And I hiked up some mountains and down, despite still feeling ashamed of my pace compared to the blistering one of a thru-hiker.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Even though my express purpose is chilling out in the woods, I feel shame for holing up and writing in a shelter. Today I leisurely paced my way down the mountain and met some other thru-hikers (Snickers and Taco) on their way out from town, overburdened with junk food. They told me to camp in town behind a church that collaborates with a business, providing hikers cold showers and a place to tent.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In town, I met more hikers: Draggin and Pops—two more Gamers—and Flower Child, a girl who'd gone south on the trail and was now going north, a drifter who'd lived in Hawaii and the Florida Keys. We ate together and camped together and talked about the lure of the trail—how it draws you in and holds you captive while torturing you. Why do I love it so much when it is so painful?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The two Gamers, too, complained about going too slow, starting on February 1 and having everyone pass them. I said: what's the rush? You have till October 15. I feel like I say this to everyone.</div>
<div>
</div>
Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-22935345294391809382015-06-12T23:19:00.000-04:002015-08-27T13:56:25.906-04:00Pine Swamp Brook to Stewart Hollow Brook Lean-to11.0 miles<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0KP5xzNZzS4/VdIz_aDSEmI/AAAAAAAACUs/FQGZ66PRvlI/s1600/P1040914.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0KP5xzNZzS4/VdIz_aDSEmI/AAAAAAAACUs/FQGZ66PRvlI/s400/P1040914.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Sewing up my backpack--my body is not the only thing eleven years older</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I got a late start this morning, dawdling in the shelter, repairing my backpack, which is ripping out more every day in the places I sweat most. (Big County hiked with this pack from Harpers Ferry to Katahdin, and I hiked with it on the PCT and Pinhoti, so it’s seen better days and a lot of trail miles.) I found a pair of work gloves discarded along the trail yesterday and it felt a gift—replacement fabric. So I sewed and wrote the morning away, even knowing I had at least six pointless up-and-downs to make it over, thinking I’m in trail shape enough for a piddly ten-mile-day. Not so.<br />
<br />
I’m suffering through shin splints. A thru-hiker named Brother Louie helpfully informed me: it’s because your calf muscles are too weak. Thanks, sir. Not much I can do about that now, other than continuing to climb the pointless mountains.<br />
<br />
So it was a hard day that was supposed to be an easy day—the worst kind. IN the middle was a river with its crossing wiped out that required a ford. The Appalachian Mountain Club “strongly recommended” the high-water route. I hate fords, especially alone without hiking poles, and the trail into the ravine went straight down. So I took the alternate route and ended up with a brutal asphalt mile-long road walk, in burning sun with luxury SUVs whipping by me at the speed of sound.<br />
<br />
Do I hate road walks more than I hate fords? Maybe so. I limped up the hill back into the blessed woods, and then limped the last flat two miles along the gorgeous Housatonic River, as the light faded and blue heron alit. It was another of these days when I wanted to rest, wanted to dip my feet in the golden water, and didn’t have time, had to make miles to the lean-to. I hobbled in right at dark, the other hikers already in their bags or with tarps pitched. Camped with two flippers (Shadow) and a Nobo (Bullet) with a 20+ day planned for tomorrow. Big surprise.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=82253">[Hiking the same section in 2004.]</a>Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-76108746046882734352015-06-11T15:10:00.000-04:002015-08-17T15:15:43.370-04:00Falls Village, Connecticut, to Pine Swamp Brook Lean-to9.0 miles<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x9J6s-7uliE/VdIxzz8Z3CI/AAAAAAAACUk/CVmjFVip3nA/s1600/P1040909-770096.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="400" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_6184060004519762978" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x9J6s-7uliE/VdIxzz8Z3CI/AAAAAAAACUk/CVmjFVip3nA/s400/P1040909-770096.jpeg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Mountain laurel, 2015</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Tonight I am camping with two flip-floppers from Harpers Ferry (Blood Blister and Pack) and a section hiker finishing off his thru-hike (Vermont Visitor), who got off at Bear Mountain in New York in 1985. I've been meeting a lot of flip-floppers lately, starting in Harpers Ferry and at other points along the trail, heading to Maine. I've also been meeting people finishing off abandoned thru-hikes—they got off in New York, or Pennsylvania, or Massachusetts, and they're here to complete. It seems fun and I am envious, to some degree, of the push to Katahdin.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It also seems an entirely different thing than a single-season "through" hike, hiking through, end to end, from Georgia to Maine. I feel like I can spot the Georgia-to-Mainers, or Gamers [GA->ME], as I've started calling them. Their packs are dirtier, their gear lighter, the glint in their eyes crazier. I don't judge the flip-floppers—hike your own hike—but they're still in their first quarter, shaking down gear, finding their legs.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Passing me on the trail, I can tell the Gamers because they're relieved when I don't ask them where they started, or what their trail name is. I nod and say, have a good hike. They move past at their three-mile-an-hour pace, covering in one day what took me three. If someone stops to talk, it's undoubtedly a section hiker, or flipper, or someone finishing off a thru-hike from a couple of years back.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I like camping with flippers, though. Pack, an older gentleman hiking with an external farm pack, put it best: it makes me feel resentment, he said. Speaking of the mega-milers who blow past, as the rest of us (me) suffer through ten-mile days, footsore and weary. I keep trying to remember, again, as cliched as it is: hike your own hike. Even them—maybe it's as hard for them to go slow as it'd be for me to go fast.</div>
<div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=82272">[Hiking the same section in 2004.]</a></div>
<div>
</div>
Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-91340902205213965152015-06-10T17:20:00.000-04:002015-08-17T14:51:54.778-04:00Bearded Woods Hostel to Falls Village, Connecticut8.2 miles<br />
<div>
<div>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QPNqEfPj4lM/Vcpm_dkhlsI/AAAAAAAACUE/FUhbV4ybz90/s1600/P1040907-797482.jpeg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="300" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_6181866678975043266" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QPNqEfPj4lM/Vcpm_dkhlsI/AAAAAAAACUE/FUhbV4ybz90/s400/P1040907-797482.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Torpedo-shaped serenity, in 2015</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I'm at the Falls Village Inn, where Big County and I ordered pizza and night-hiked past the shelter so many moons ago. I love sitting here with my well-poured pint, remembering those nights eleven years ago, being the dirty hiker writing at the classy Connecticut taproom, waiting for my bacon cheeseburger with grilled onions. I came into this town precisely for this experience, remembering the dim lighting of this room, exactly the same as in 2004. It's a challenge being a single woman hiking, and maybe never more so than when coming into a town and ordering a beer, sporting my hairy legs amid the white-dressed silver-haired ladies.<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, I love everything about this experience. Camping behind the Toymaker's Cafe with no bathroom, by myself, in the gravel even. One thing I'd conveniently forgotten about the trail is how crowded it is. Aside from my first night camping, it's the first time I've camped alone. After a short day hiking in beautiful Connecticut hills, crossing the dammed Housatonic and its falls, I was able to spend a sunlit afternoon alone, catching up on my reading and writing in some stranger's backyard.<br />
<br />
I love the torpedo-like serenity of being caged into my little mesh one-person tent, even here in the middle of town. Being able to zip myself in is like wearing a shroud, or an invisibility cloak. In many ways, spending an afternoon alone in the sun is easier here, in a stranger's backyard, than in normal life.<br />
<br />
Why is that? Couldn't I just pitch my tent in Maine or Massachusetts? It is the beauty of being a the stranger come to town, beyond suspicion, anonymous by virtue of my impermanence, come to eat a burger and leave.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
</div>
</div>
<a href="http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=82275">[Hiking the same section in 2004.]</a>Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-81778882671819436422015-06-09T13:14:00.000-04:002015-08-17T14:45:11.949-04:00Brassie Brook Lean-to to Bearded Woods Hostel5.8 miles<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4EkqTOMKJDU/Vb-g39-5awI/AAAAAAAACQw/Q04ulqHEzuE/s1600/P1040894.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4EkqTOMKJDU/Vb-g39-5awI/AAAAAAAACQw/Q04ulqHEzuE/s400/P1040894.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>At the White Hart Inn, 11 years later--civilization and beer!</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.trailgallery.com/photos/2085/tj2085_110604_192335_71524.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.trailgallery.com/photos/2085/tj2085_110604_192335_71524.jpg" height="270" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The view from above the White Hart Inn in 2004</i></td></tr>
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<br />
Tonight I share the hostel with several thru-hikers: Giuseppe, on his third thru-hike in so many years, Brother Louie, Luke Trailwalker—still a teenager, and Lonely, an impressive flip-flipper who started southbound from Harpers Ferry to Georgia and has now flipped north. He camped in the snow below zero, hiking Virginia in March, which is really impressive. And Hudson, the hostel owner, also an ex-thru-hiker.<br />
<br />
I hesitate to speak ill of a hostel and I don’t, because Bearded Woods is really nice, but what I am remembering now of my 2004 thru-hike is the collective drama of assembled hikers, the badmouthing of hikers up and down the trail, of hostel owners in other states, the recitation of gear weight and accumulated mileage. I love these hikers and the trail but at the same time, again, I want to shake them. I know I did it too, back in my day, but I believe thru-hikers can miss the trail entirely. This discussion of two 26-mile days and you’ll make it to Vermont. How many 20s before the next town, as if the woods in between were irrelevant, a mere hurdle to be leaped over.<br />
<br />
What’s the point of hiking at all? Why not road-walk or marathon or use a treadmill to go 2200 miles? If one is always going to put in earphones, and move at a four-mile-an-hour pace and barely blink at a vista? I’d like to believe that the magic of the trail penetrates even the numbest of skulls, but I am skeptical. It seems that the goal is just another feather in a cap, that mileage becomes a competition, another pissing contest.<br />
<br />
I’m remembering what I loved about this trail but also what I hated, how compared to other trails I have hiked it is crowded, a booming metropolis of voices outshouting each other. I went to the woods to live deliberately, said Thoreau. Do these people even know who Thoreau is?<br />
<br />
I came to the woods to be alone. And still I am surrounded by people, as lovely, as annoying as people anywhere. As Friedrich Nietzsche said: “In loneliness, the lonely one eats himself; in a crowd, the many eat him. Now choose.”<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=82285">[Hiking the same section in 2004.]</a> Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34713524.post-25241440608085956342015-06-08T23:51:00.000-04:002015-08-03T12:28:00.161-04:00Glen Brook to Brassie Brook Lean-to9.3 miles<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-X_Q_oPK1sRA/VaPsCwF83lI/AAAAAAAACQI/AO5rZvT9QCE/s1600/P1040887.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-X_Q_oPK1sRA/VaPsCwF83lI/AAAAAAAACQI/AO5rZvT9QCE/s400/P1040887.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Rock at the Massachusetts border, atop which Big County sat in 2004 (2015)</i></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.trailgallery.com/photos/2085/tj2085_110604_193136_71526.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.trailgallery.com/photos/2085/tj2085_110604_193136_71526.jpg" height="270" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>And here he is, sitting on the rock in 2004</i></td></tr>
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<br />
This morning I stayed by myself at the shelter till eleven. The thru-hiker I camped with left at 5:30, so I had the whole chilly morning to myself for sleeping then reading then random camping tasks—sewing up my hiking shorts, trimming my toenails. It was the kind of Appalachian Trail morning—a vista of mountains, a running brook in front—that I’d dreamed of before starting. The wonder is that I hiked at all.<br />
<br />
But I did, thinking of eight easy miles to the next shelter. They were not easy. In the register someone compared this Massachusetts ridge line to a mini-New Hampshire, and I thought they were exaggerating but they were not. Clambering up and down seemingly impossible rock massifs, sliding down on my butt, going backwards using all four limbs.<br />
<br />
It’s days like today I realized why this particular trail is legendary, why it deserves its reputation, why it’s a test of endurance in its relentlessness. I love it and I hate it all at once. I love that I can never take it for granted, that eight miles is never easy. I hate how painful it is, the excruciating shin splints I am developing from ramming into hard granite.<br />
<br />
I slid into camp right at dark, with rain beginning to fall, two people already asleep in their bags. I made Thai ramen in the rain, spilling some when my too-flimsy aluminum windbreak collapsed, retreating to the shelter to wait and eat in the dark. But even sliding into my bag, cold and sweaty and exhausted and in pain, I was so happy. This is really living; why I am here.<br />
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<a href="http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=82286">[Hiking the same section in 2004.]</a>Melissa Jenkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05671992975667465476noreply@blogger.com0