Beginning A Book

“Elissa.“ Ice crystals glittered across my field of vision as I sucked in a deep breath and turned to Lloyd. The rising sun, still dim but creating shadows on the snow, gave his face an azure hue. “Elissa, you do realize that if you don’t move we are most likely going to die here?” I turned back to face the wall of winter on which we clung like water droplets on a stem. Leaning my forehead against that mass, I looked down, down between my stiff legs, shifting my eyes to each side. Thousands of feet of vertical drop lay beneath us. I took another deep breath and forced it out with an airy “poohew.” Pressure breathing. It was supposed to help retain energy. I needed every bit of energy possible.

Lloyd called my name again, this time more softly. “Elissa, don’t be scared.” I smiled. I wasn’t scared. I had every right to be, but I wasn’t. “I’m fine, Lloyd. I just can’t move.” There. That word: can’t. It echoed across the windswept headwall, curved up over frozen cornices, and slid back down ice falls to haunt the four mountaineers whose life depended on the ability to defy that word. After all, wasn’t it to prove the meaning of can that I had joined the Spokane Mountaineers? My mind raced back to a day, five months earlier…

And so my story begins. The events took place six years ago, but I never finished writing about them. My goal was to do so before this weekend, and publish the story into book form for my mountaineer husband's birthday on Monday. So much for that goal - I have been SWAMPED with homework. But still, in the back of my mind is that faint glimmer of hope, telling me this story is closer to being completed than ever before. And it now has a Part 2 - falling in love with and marrying the man who inspired me into mountain adventures six years ago. The universe has such an ironic sense of humor.

Snow Caving

Watch weather patterns and snow accumulation; determine the most appropriate destination for your adventure. Discuss gear and food considerations with your husband; make shopping lists; purchase necessary items. Assemble gear and prepare food. Cook a carb-rich dinner to load your body up with calories for the extra exertion. Attempt to get a good night's sleep knowing that tomorrow night you will not have the comfort of a bed or a thermostat.

Wake at 5-o'-dark; try to choke down a protein-rich breakfast to give your body something to burn for hours of activity. Load packs, snowshoes, trekking poles, dog bed, and dog into truck - oh, shoot, I forgot to get the tailgate fixed - hoist everything up over the locked tailgate. (Why is my pack so heavy?) Drive through dawn's light to a pass in Montana, which reportedly received more snow in the past couple days than any mountain in the entire world. (Don't look at the dropping numbers on your truck's temperature readout!)

Slip heat packs into your boots; strap on your gaiters, snowshoes, and pack. (Wow, my pack is still heavy!) Clip saddlebags on your dog; contain him while your mountaineering friends arrive and gear up. Grab your trekking poles; check the trail time; try not to trip on your snowshoes as your dog bounds up the trail connected to you by a leash. Ease into a steady pace; allow your pack to settle against your back. Breathe. (They say breathing is really important. So why is this pack so heavy?)

Now just walk. Or backpack, or snowshoe, or whatever you want to call this method of movement into the mountains. Don't engage in confrontation with the snowmobilers who have chosen your one marked hiking trail rather than their hundreds of marked snowmobiling trails to get into the Basin. Try to ignore their exhaust fumes which are making you nauseous as the trail gets steeper, their revving engines which are obliterating all other noises about you. (I could have stood out on the freeway if I wanted to breathe in exhaust and hear engines!)

Climb the last rise to reach the plateau tucked into the hillside. Stamp down enough snow to take off your pack, put on another layer, and rehydrate. Slip into your Gore-tex and assemble your shovel – it’s time to dig!

Four hours later, you have constructed a 6x6-foot sitting area and a 6x9-foot kitchen complete with benches for sitting, counters for cooking, and cubbyholes for storing gear. You have shoveled until your back is screaming and your abs are no longer willing to hold your body in an upright position. But there, in the side of the hill, is a four-foot tunnel leading into a spacious, circular cave – your home for the night. You crawl inside and peel off your sweat-soaked layers to change into dry clothes before hypothermia sets in, at the same time spreading out a tarp, sleep pads, and sleeping bags on the raised floor.

By this time, your incredible husband has arranged all the cooking gear in the kitchen and is boiling snow for hot cocoa and cup-o-noodle soup. (I never knew ramen could taste so good!) Your sister wants to go photograph everyone else’s snow caves, so you join her for a parade-of-homes tour in which you realize that everyone has a different method for constructing the ultimate home-in-the-snow. While you have fought your claustrophobia all day, you can’t help but notice when you return to your cave that the roof seems to be sinking where your dog walked on top during the early shoveling phase. (What was he thinking? Didn’t he know that the snow wasn’t set up yet? Why is he even up there? Didn’t I give him a rawhide to amuse himself with? Oh, that’s right – it was white, and the snow is white; so, we’ll never see it again.)

Dinner is amazing. The wind and cold have rendered your camp stove almost inoperative, but your husband has somehow coaxed it along to cook hamburgers on a miniature frying pan. (Thank goodness he likes this stuff – I would have stuck with granola bars and trail mix!)

You have packed in all the ingredients for an Oreo pie, which you assemble and let set up in the snow (instant refrigeration!). Your mountaineering friends come from their respective snow caves to your kitchen for a surprise birthday celebration. While there isn’t enough pie for you to have a piece, you’re pretty sure that it turned out from all the happy smiles on your friends’ faces. Relaxed, they begin to tell stories – stories of adventure, death-defying experiences, stories that convey our shared love for the outdoors. Snow flurries give way to a starry sky as you listen, trying to keep your extremities from freezing.

Bedtime. All right, this is where it gets fun. You have to trek into the woods to relieve yourself, making sure that you don’t fall into a tree well or freeze your butt off when you wrestle out of your seventeen layers. You are cold, tired, and grouchy by the time you get back to camp, but you still have to figure out your strategy for the night. Put on a dry base layer? Wear my down parka to bed? Hold my warmed water bottle against my coat or down by my feet? Forget it – just throw everything into your pack, stash your pack in the snow, and drop to your knees to crawl down the tunnel into the cave. (Brr, when did this snow turn to ice?) Oh, no, the worst as happened – where your dog walked earlier, the ceiling has sunk almost to the floor of the cave. There’s enough space for one or two people to sleep against the still-raised side, but the thought makes you so claustrophobic you have to back quickly out of the tunnel to breathe.

You decide along with your husband not to risk the cave falling in on you. So you have to pull all the sleeping pads and bags back out of the cave and arrange them in the pit of your kitchen. Your dog is scrambling up everything you lay down, and your trekking poles won’t grab enough snow to hold the bivvy sack you are trying to string out over your heads. Oh well, just hope it doesn’t snow on you in the middle of the night. (Didn’t they just get six inches here last night?)

One by one, you, your husband, and your sister slide into your sleeping bags. Toss and turn for about nineteen minutes until you find a semi-comfortable position where your sleeping pad is at least somewhat under you. Pull your sleeping bag tightly enough around your face that your nose won’t turn to ice but you won’t die of claustrophobia, either. (Oh, wow, those stars are beautiful!)

And then it begins. A restless night in which your dog decides he can not sleep on his own pad covered in blankets. He must walk across your head, attempt to get in your sleeping bag with you, run down your body, bite your feet, and turn three circles before he finally lays down between you and your husband. He pushes his legs out so you slide completely off your sleeping pad onto your sister. She groans. You try to sleep. Two hours later, the process repeats. Three hours later, your dog is running laps across all of your bodies and snuffling loudly. At 5 AM, you lie in quiet exhaustion as your husband struggles to quiet the dog who is now standing on your backside. (WHY did we ever decide to bring him with us?)

You don’t even want to smile when you finally get out of your sleeping bag at 6 AM and begin pulling on boots and gaiters frozen stiff with ice. Your husband feels miserable that you aren’t smiling, but you are just grouchy as can be at your dog. (Yeah, he’s just a puppy, but so what, doesn’t he know I need my sleep?)

And then, you look up. There is the most beautiful pinkish-golden glow curling across the mountains. The air is cold – 17 degrees – but crisp and gleaming with snow diamonds. Your husband is making coffee for you. You smile. You know that you will do this again, because this is who you are – a person who lives for adventure. 

Take Joy in Writing

This week we are asked to reflect in our class discussion about our blogging/writing experiences over the past several weeks. A timely assignment, given the fact that I have also this week been attempting to complete writing a non-fiction book while reading Take Joy for Writers by Jane Yolen. I haven't gotten very far on either, but Yolen's advice is encouraging: "Uncovery, discovery, recovery are all part of that [process of writing]. So take the joy in the the process." Blogging consistently has helped me to uncover new truths about writing, discover that I have changed immensely from the last time I wrote on a consistent basis, and recover my love of writing. To be completely honest, I have been scared to write for the past few years. It used to be one of my favorite activities, but after a severe and long-lasting depression I felt unable to write. In a way, I think I was scared because writing makes me face my own mental processes, and as anyone who has dealt with depression knows, your mental processes can hurt you. I have been healthy and happy for some time now, but it wasn't until this class that I finally forced myself to start writing again. And I realized that it's okay - that I am okay. I may continue to struggle with things in my mind and reflect those struggles in my writing, but they won't defeat me. I have something more to believe in now. So once again, I can take joy in writing.  

Generate Your Own Thoughts, Please

This morning's message from my leadership society was about core values. It motivated me to think about my core values, what they are and how they guide my life. One of those values is integrity. I still can't explain exactly why, but I feel so violated when I encounter plagiarism.

The first time someone copied one of my ideas, I thought it was just a coincidence. Maybe we thought alike. The second time someone took my words and made them his own, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was just too tired to formulate his own words. The third time someone marketed my project as her own, I didn't know how to respond.

The incidents above actually occurred in my childhood. Returning to college for an elementary ed degree, I've learned that age is not necessarily an indicator of people's maturity or integrity. My academic work has been plagiarized a number of times. In one particular online course, a classmate copied my entire post, added a couple personal sentences, and re-posted it as her own. I can understand distance learning students coming up with similar reflections in response to assignments - it actually happens a lot - but the same exact words? Come on! It makes me wonder. Do these students like my work so much that they think they can't improve on it themselves? Have they been taught that it's okay to "borrow" other persons' ideas, as long as they don't get caught? Are they under the impression that they aren't accountable for their own cognitive processes? Are they just too lazy to think for themselves? 

Yes, I'm on a soapbox. And yes, I am frustrated. Where I typically stick to myself and only impose my values/standards on myself, this is one area where I do see in black and white across the human spectrum. It's not okay to plagiarize. You can be inspired by someone's ideas, be inflamed by someone's ideas, quote another person or refer to their words or works; but don't steal the product of their time, energy, and thought and say it's yours. Just don't do it. 

Sunshine

My doctor says I need more Vitamin D. Who doesn't? After all, this is North Idaho, where the sun only shines a few days out of our six-month-long winter! This morning I was scurrying all around trying to get ready for our weekend trip, plan out a town errand list, and finish up homework for the week. And then I noticed Kona sitting quietly in our entryway, doing nothing but feeling the sunshine pouring through the glass front door. I sat down next to him, just sat and felt the warmth of a none-too-common but oh-so-needed natural light. So calming. So good. Who says a dog can't teach humans?