More to the point
I just drove around town confirming, for the six billionth time, that there is no such thing as good cider up here.
The obvious solution is to return to England, yes?
So: who wants to walk Hadrian’s Wall with me next summer? I’m serious. I’ve wanted to do this since I found out they opened a National Pathway along the wall. Let’s go!
New England Falls? Pffft.
East Coasters, you can keep your fire-engine red, your traffic-stopping yellow, your sunset-blaze orange. You can keep your flashy leaves. I don’t want ‘em.
I’ve got mountains that look like a patchwork of dark green and earthy gold, with just a hint of red. The leaves on the tree run every shade between forest green and the muted gold/yellow color of the turning leaves. It’s not the brilliance of the colors or the number of different colors that make it spectacular—it’s the subtle variations in shading, even at a distance. And close up, it’s the different rate at which the trees are changing color: the one that’s still pale green standing right next to an entirely yellow tree; the yellow tree next to one where the leaves are gold on top and green on the bottom; the lanky evergreens poking through here and there.
And underneath it all—literally—the last purple blooms of fireweed, the clover flowers, the daisies, the Queen Anne’s Lace. Increasingly, the cold is turning the fireweed’s leaves from green to a deep, almost maroon, red color. One of the prominent low bushes is also changing to deep red, with brighter red berries.
It’s green and red at ground level and gold and green in the treetops. But the best part, for me, is how the relative closeness in shades draws attention to the varieties of trees and bushes—the textures of the leaves and stalks become as important to the landscape as the color.
I never got that in New England. I’m not saying New England lacks texture, I’m just saying I was so razzle-dazzled by the trees I never looked at the ground.
New England Falls are a one-night stand. Alaskan Falls are a seduction.
What 20 Years of Education Gets You
Yesterday, I had a brilliant idea: the state park is only a mile and a half or so from the house. The dog needs to be walked. Why not walk the dog to (and in) the state park, instead of up and down boring roads?
Yes. Well. Reason number one that was a stupid idea: my tennis shoes are years past their expiration date and have already rubbed my heels raw. I currently have them bandaged up, even when I wear non-old-tennis shoes, because they hurt so much. So, clearly, a 3-mile minimum walk (depending on how much I hike around the park) is just the thing to do, right? Right.
Let me just remind you that all the roads in this area seem to go up (or down) at 45 degree angles and the straight sections are generally less than a 1/4 mile long. Don’t you think it’s an excellent idea for an out-of-shape city girl to walk a couple miles on those sorts of roads? (The answer, according to my hips, thighs, bum, and, strangely, right elbow, is NO!)
But since I lack the common sense God gave to lemmings, I went anyway. Walk to the park? Just fine. The bandages kept my heels from rubbing, so no problems there. Walk into the park? Just fine. There was a nice, pretty level path and we just meandered up it. And then?
The path goes straight up. And up. And up. Apparently, the path goes right up and over the mountain pass.
Shouldn’t hiking paths, like cigarette boxes, come with Surgeon General’s warnings? “Cranky, this path will kill you. Stop now!”
I didn’t stop. Obviously. Why would I? No, I waited until I was 3/4 the way up the mountain to concede that the path just wasn’t going to go sideways at all. And then I finally turned around and went down the mountain, which is hard to do when you 1) hate going down stairs and ladders, much less mud-covered rocks; 2) are wearing years-old tennis shoes with less than zero traction; 3) have thighs that are quivering more than a jello mold held by your buxom Aunt Zoe.
We did make it down the mountain, obviously. If it tells you anything about the relative difficulty of that trail, I thought the mile and a half walk back to the house—up and down those 45 degree roads—was 1) easy; and 2) a nice cool-down exercise.
I think it’s clear that the bulk of my education has been focused on after-the-fact analysis and not on planning and execution stages. Sure, my super-honed brain can tell you now that I was an idiot; how come none of those brain cells stepped forward yesterday while I was shoving bandaged feet into my tennis shoes?!
Don’t cry for me Argentina, the truth is
I’m house sitting out in the closest thing Anchorage has to a suburb. It’s not actually a suburb, but it is a small town situated in a valley about fifteen miles from here. People who can’t deal with Anchorage’s crowded-ness (and you’d have to know Anchorage to know why that’s funny) go out there. And people who think the pseudo-suburb is too crowded go out to The Valley (all caps, and not at all the same thing as this valley, which is a little valley of the sort you get when mountains rise up on either side of a stream).
Speaking of mountains rising up on either side of a stream, this house has an unobstructed view of said stream, and there aren’t any houses on the opposite side of the valley. It’s rough spending all day looking out at trees and streams and bunnies and birds. And now you know why my internet time is limited: I can hang out at that house, and enjoy the isolation and, you know, general lack of neighbors six feet away, or I can come into town where I do have internet but my “view” is also my neighbor’s siding.
Yeah. Not so much.
Another benefit of this house? The dog likes long walks every day. I’m reasonably fit, I suppose, for me, but let me tell you: walking a dog up and down 45 degree slopes all day? Sheesh. You people paying gym memberships to do the stair stepper really need to cut that out and buy a mountain. There’s no way your electronic equipment can compare to the burn you get from sliding up and down a gravel hill.
Fortunately for me, the house also has a jacuzzi tub to die for. I admit it: I’m currently cheating on the dictionary with this tub. It’s big enough to swim in, practically. And deep. And has water jets. And a hot water supply that’s 1) hot and 2) can fill up the whole tub. I take everything back I ever said about marrying the first man who will buy me a boat: I want a jacuzzi tub.
The house even comes complete with a cat, and she’s very sweet. Unfortunately, she’s also a real cat, unlike Pookie. Pookie, as you know, refuses to have anything to do with this “hunting” thing, and if an insect happens to come in the house she’ll come get me so we can huddle together on top of the book case until someone rescues us. Anything bigger than an insect? Pookie would die of fright. This cat, however, hunts. And likes to show off her hunting skills by leaving me shrews in the living room. Isn’t she sweet? At least she’s neat about it and the problem is nothing a broom and dustpan can’t solve.
Anyway. So now you know where I am. I just don’t want you to think I’m somehow suffering from internet deprivation. I mean, I am, but I have a jacuzzi tub and a mountain view to console me. I think I’ll be all right for the next couple of weeks, you know?
Some things are SO important
...that I packed them in my car for the trans-American trip last summer and… never unpacked them. I just found that “oh so important” box of stuff today, actually: a year after that trip ended.
Things I thought were important? Included:
- My old Windows laptop. Fair enough; I didn’t want to mail it.
- My DVD player. But I mailed the VCR. What made the DVD player special?
- My super-sized ergodynamic keyboard. Uh. Ok.
- A box of computer disks that I haven’t looked at since before I went to undergrad.
- A box of tampons. Fat lot of good THOSE did me, what with being packed away in this other box.
- Pots and pans. Oh, come on now. Surely those could have been mailed?
- A bag of pennies.
- Various electronic cords. Cords to what? I have no idea. But there are lots of them. I suspect they got up to some twisted things while they were in that box; there seem to be more than I remember packing, anyway.
- A cutting board.
- A plastic strainer.
- A ton of tupperware lids. But not the actual Tupperware containers.
- A pint glass wrapped in a pair of pajamas. Actually, I was wondering what happened to those pajama pants.
- An antique (practically) Hershey’s chocolate milk tin thing with a bunch of foreign (British, German, Russian) currancy in it. Sa-weet!
- The VCR remote. But not the DVD remote.
- All my “good” jewelry (both necklaces). Hmm. Guess I haven’t had much call to dress up in the last year.
- A bunch of paperwork I apparently thought I would need right away. Uh. Yeah. Not so much.
Plus various other odds and ends not worth mentioning, like a rock. Not any sort of special rock, just… a rock.