A little validation goes a long way

A little before 5am on the morn of my 42^nd birthday, I left the Cataloochee Valley. The Catalooch, as it is locally known, is in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and, moreover, it’s where I currently live. This secluded valley is visited by a tiny minority (~thousands) of the million-strong throngs who explore more well-known sites along the main thoroughfare of the park.

I wanted to honor my tradition of getting high (uh, in terms of elevation, that is) on my birthday, and doing so meant that I would have to venture to those locations more familiar to the tourist crowds. In fact, the high point I sought is one of the most famous places in the Smokies, aside from Dollywood:  Clingman’s Dome.

I had hoped to watch the sunrise from Clingman’s, which explains why l strove to reach the trailhead before 6:45am. Alas, although the 2+ hour drive to Newfound Gap was bathed in morning glow, the Dome was shrouded in fog so thick that I couldn’t see across the parking lot. I drowsed in my truck for an hour waiting for the fog to show some hint of surrender, but it only seemed to grow heavier. The booming, disembodied voices of obnoxious groups of college kids and families pierced the gloom. Touring motorcycles appeared and disappeared, trailing the musical choices of the Harley-mounted dentists and contractors through the mist. Some people appeared to be hiking up the trail to the dome itself, a structure known for both its position on the mountain and its gaudy tackiness. I don’t know what those intrepid day-trippers expected to see; I suspected that the experience of being in the dome would have been akin to being wrapped in wet cotton.

I finally gave up and drove away from the parking area.  As I lost elevation, the dripping fog began to lessen. I stopped briefly at the dedication site, where Franklin D. Roosevelt officially proclaimed the existence of Great Smoky Mountains National Park back in 1941, watching tendrils of fog drift among the green ridges visible all around.  I wound my way ‘down the mountain’, as we say here in the Smokies, stopping at a few short nature trails and spots of interest. I relaxed next to a stream, watched a man back his F-150 into his wife’s minivan while trying to park in a picnic area, honked in panic at inattentive people drifting into my lane over the double yellow line – in other words, I had a typical national park experience.

Having entered the park at the south end of 441, in the casino-funded town of Cherokee, NC, I decided to exit in that most ‘gatewayish’ of the infamous gateway communities, Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I had an ulterior motive in doing so – I could stop in and do some quick shopping while most people were still standing in line at the pancake houses.  One stop was the Nantahala Outdoor Center. Without going into icky details, I had realized that one of my hydration bladders was supporting what threatened to become intelligent life and I planned to pick up a cleaning kit from the NOC.

While in the NOC, I fell into discussion with an older staffer about various gear and gizmos, as we men of the outdoors are prone to do. As we talked about the usefulness of various devices for designed to signal for help, this fellow chanced to mention that he was careful about such things, because he sometimes guided less-than-capable folks into the woods and he had to be conscious of his MS.

I was intrigued by his mention of our shared disease, and we talked more. He was a former attack helo pilot (he flew ‘snakes’, which I suspected meant AH-1 Cobras or variants). His tours in Vietnam and that technology likely put him a little beyond my father’s age; he was also an ‘SF’ medic. That means Special Forces – I presumed Army – in the acronym-filled and often unpretentious parlance of the infantry-based Spec Ops community. In sum, then, this old guy was a badass who had seen and done a great deal but didn’t see the need to brag too much.

I told him that I was in the same boat, medically speaking. We chatted about this confusing, crippling disease for a few minutes. He said that he was a ‘reader’ – he started reading about MS after his diagnosis but almost immediately stopped. I call myself a ‘researcher’ – I too, delved into the research about MS, but quickly quit:  there is, simply put, not a lot of good news out there. Neither of us wanted to read the obligatorily horrible stories of tragedy and disability, and lives destroyed.

His combat medic background allowed him to rationally dismiss the MS theories about milk allergies, plastic exposure, or bee sting cures, just as my EMS training led me to do. He’d been diagnosed more than 30 years ago, and he just kept doing what he wanted to do and hoping for the best.

Jesus, I thought as I stood there leaning on the GPS cabinet, surrounded by wealthy tourists buying over-priced backpacks and bear bells. This man is the only other person I’ve met with this damn disease who’s acting like me.

Two . . ahem . . mature men who’ve spent our lives doing things, sometimes tough things, outside the norm. No picket fences, no IBM or WalMart health plans, no 401k. More than that, we continued this wandering life in the face of the staggering uncertainty that MS uses to crush many people. We each ignored the wacko theories, tried to dismiss the ubiquitous bad MS news, worked to stay in good health, and kept on pushing ourselves. We had a good bit in common, this stranger and I.

We said farewell and I went on my way. I reflected that our 10-minute conversation had taken place amid kayaks, backpacks and compasses, parts of a lifestyle that some people tell me I can’t have any more. Well, they told this man the same thing – decades ago. His plan worked for him into his 70s, and so I take this random, unexpected experience as validation of my hopes that my plan will work for me. I listened to Kasey Chambers on the way home and decided to squeeze some more travel into my future.

It was nearing the end of April, and my first day of driving across the isle of Newfoundland had been uneventful, with sunny – yes, sunny – skies and dry roads, something no one expected. I reached Corner Brook having encountered a minimum of traffic, something which was expected. The ferry website revealed that the nightly crossing had been cancelled due to high winds. I hoped the dawn would bring better weather and retired early in anticipation of driving the remaining 216 km to the marine terminal by 9am the next day.

I was approaching the terminal in Port aux Basques Saturday morning, having driven 200 of those 216 km, when an automated message informed me that the morning crossing also had been cancelled. Ahead, a truck had been forced off the road (but not rolled over) by the classic Wreckhouse area winds, so I stopped and bowed to the inevitability of the North Atlantic. I returned to Corner Brook and spent most of the day drowsing in my truck in the WalMart parking lot, and walking around the mall when I needed to step out of the truck (the same harsh, frigid wind which was keeping the ferries docked also made outdoor strolling unpleasant). I finally prevailed upon a fellow LESA (Landscape Ecology and Spatial Analysis) labber, Stacey, and her landlord/roommate, Isabelle, a school chum of Yolanda’s, for a place to stay that evening. Thanks, ladies.

I rose early yet again on Sunday and struck out for the Port aux Basques terminal. The weather front had passed through and the ferries were running. Because of the cancellations over the last few days, my morning crossing was almost empty; even though I was pretty far back in the boarding queue, I parked one row back from the front/unloading door of the ship. The ship’s crew said the evening crossing was scheduled to be full, but there were plenty of empty seats and berths for my cruise.

When the ferry finally lurched into motion, I went out on the deck and watched Newfoundland’s harsh south coastline retreat rapidly into the snowy distance. The Long Range mountains and the south barrens looked rugged and inviting in a challenging sort of way. It is the landscape of Random Passage and The Shipping News and reflects the singularly brutal introductory narrative by which millions of people have come to know Newfoundland. They are taught about the austerity and little else. It would take too long to contrast the stories of lonely, isolated and backward outport life with my academic, multinational, pseudo-cosmopolitan experiences in St. John’s over the last two years. I’ve come to believe that we’ve struggled, all of us who’ve lived and laughed and loved and learned on The Rock, but in very, very different ways.

After a mildly unpleasant sensation experienced while assisting Emily ‘Captain Cod’ Zimmerman in her statistically-driven gadiform-jigging duties, I feared that I might get seasick on the passage, given the whitecaps and swells. After wolfing down a really crappy sandwich, however, the huge ship promptly rocked me to sleep. I snoozed in the viewing lounge facing out over the Cabot Straight, under a sign which explained in four languages that no one was allowed to sleep in the lounge. Over the six-hour ride, almost everyone in the room was asleep at some point. Some slept soundly, snoring, while others, like me, woke and quickly returned to sleep whenever a strong wave hit the hull and sent spray high into the air, splashing against the large observation windows, seven decks above the water.

Within four hours, Cape Breton had replaced the horizon featureless horizon of the North Atlantic on starboard. Two hours later, with little fanfare and considerably less shouting, gesturing, exhaust fumes and general complexity than my last superferry deboarding (February 2010), I set foot on the mainland of North America for the first time in over two years.

For those years, the bulk of the continent had been so near and yet so far, in terms of mail service and politics and shopping and weather, that my sudden transition from the Rock to the Rest of the World seemed a little surreal. Unlike other MUN students, I had not flown home from St. John’s for holidays or concerts; I still have no idea how they afforded all that travel while I went into debt buying groceries and spark plugs. The sensation of arriving in a new world was intensified as I stopped at a small road-side motel and paid $40 for a room. My 6-hour stay in a Corner Brook Holiday Inn cost $150.

I arrived at the international border crossing in the hamlet of Houlton, Maine, armed with itemized lists of my belongings and protracted explanations as to where I’d been for the last two years. Unlike my entry into Canada, the DHS border guard simply asked me where I was born, where I was going, and if I was bringing anything into the country that I didn’t have when I left it. As one might guess, I hadn’t done a lot of shopping for durable goods as a grad student, and the few expensive things I’d bought were all shipped from the US anyway. As I looked at him, broad-chested, buffed, crewcut and wearing military-style BDU clothing and flak gear, I thought about:

(a) joking that 30% of my truck was now comprised of Canadian auto parts; or

(b) explaining that the RNC, the RCMP and the CBSA had been surprisingly effective - for competing federal agencies, I mean - in their conspired efforts to confiscate and destroy my Marlin .22 rifle

but in the end I bowed to expediency and simply said ‘no’. He gave me a perfunctory 'welcome home' and waved me through.

Home? I thought. Personally speaking, that’s a much more complicated concept than it was even just a few years ago. In the name of road-numbed half-consciousness, I shrugged off the pending introspection and prepared myself for the loud, aggressive onslaught of NE US traffic. This preparation neglected the fact that I was still in northern Maine. The roads of Maine where hemmed in by timber on either side – dark forests brimming with moose, and in that way they continued the trend of the roads on which I’d been since I left Regina Place. But as I left the coast, the Maine sun revealed itself in a blue sky and soon the bulk of the northern terminus of the AT and that storied outdoorsperson’s mecha, Katahdin, appeared. I’m no Main-ah, but it was a beautiful area.

The rest of the trip was characterized by linking numerous interstate highways together to take me on my southeasterly course, in the process avoiding New York city, Philly, Washington, D.C and New Jersey entirely. I passed through so many states that I had trouble keeping track of which jurisdiction I was in at any given time. The traffic did get heavy at times, but remained surprisingly well-mannered. I stayed in cheap motels along the way, slowly reminding my body what beds feel like.

After skimming north of the most thickly-populated areas of my homeland, I met my boss at the BP (that’s not a BP station; it is the BP which serves as my main social outlet - Britney, Amanda and that friendly old guy - and main source of last-minute groceries, batteries, morning pastries and gas). Then I proceeded to wind along the narrow mountain road which led to the secluded and historically significant valley simply called Cataloochee. I pulled into the ranger station and introduced myself to my flatmates and neighbors: elk, pileated woodpeckers, two species of mice, a toad or two, quite a few turkeys, and a few bears.

While my arrival in the Cataloochee Valley was not celebrated (the mice may have even complained), it did mark the end of my 2700-mile odyssey, including as it did long hours, complex intersections and signage, variable road conditions, exhaustion, delicate negotiations with all manner of large, fast-moving tractor-trailer rigs, rain, fog and night driving. Naturally, my first assignment for GRSM was to click through a three-hour DOI online training about safe/defensive driving.

Friday: Corner Brook, or as close to the west coast (of Newfoundland) as I can get

Saturday: mainland North America and all points east

I leave the Rock in the same manner in which I arrived - a six to ten hour ferry ride (let's hope for six, shall we?) with my truck and RocketBox loaded to capacity, although I don't seem to own much other than clothes, camping gear, and books. This will be followed by Nova Scotia, then New Brunswick, then into the good 'ol US of A via Houlton, Maine.

Provided CBSA lets me out, and CBP lets me in, I should re-enter the country of my birth on Sunday. This marks the first time in 27 months that I've been in the US or even on the continent proper. I hope there are no firearms issues:  Canada took away my .22 rifle; will the US allow me to enter unarmed?

I leave having defended, but not finished, my thesis. The onus is on me to keep writing each night in hopes of producing a draft to my committee this summer. Being the oddball scientist, writing is easier for me that numbers, so I think I can pull it off. I will be doing that pulling from the Appalachians. I return to the green and gray in the early days of May, joining the ranks of those harassing the elk of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Yes, the thought of finishing my thesis alone is intimidating, but first I have to concentrate on starting my new job. Yes, the thought of starting my new job is intimidating, but first I have to concentrate on driving from Maine to North Carolina. Yes, the thought of driving down the eastern seaboard is intimidating, but first I have to concentrate on getting across the island. Yes, the thought of driving across Newfoundland is intimidating, but first I have to finish packing . . . ah, well, you get the point. Generally, my plans involving avoiding Boston, New York, New Jersey, the Washington, DC, area, trying to minimize sleeping in the driver's seat and encountering no snow.

So, in sum, tomorrow begins another series of days lived entirely on the road (or in the belly of a superferry) with most of my life on my back, much like a turtle or a snail. I hope to make better speed than either of those taxa, but safe and slow(er) has gotten me through snowy Montana mountains and icy Newfoundland roads, and hence it should get me to the southlands.

Permanent Vacation

To anyone who might be interested, May marked the publication of Permanent Vacation. Not to be confused with the 2001 album from Aerosmith, this is a collection of musings and stories from National Park Service employees about their times living amid some of the continent's most unforgettable landscapes. They are western tales, including one from yours truly and four others, new and old, from good ol' Yellowstone.



The book is published by the hip artisans at Bona Fide Books, a small press in Tahoe deserving a lot of support. There is more information at their website . .

http://www.bonafidebooks.com

their cool book-promotion site . .

http://www.pvstories.net

and even . . (gasp!)

Facebook

This fantastic little book is available from Bona Fide and Amazon.com (but NOT amazon.ca . . sigh . . don't get me started.)

Happy Anniversary to me

Today the sun rises (speaking theoretically; we don't actually see the sun very often but we continue to believe in its existence) on the first anniversary of my arrival on The Rock.

Yes, it was in the bygone days of 2010 that I found myself at the mythical eastern terminus of the Trans-Canada Highway. Despite the assurances of maps and a number of apparently knowledgeable people, I was not in Halifax. Not even close. On the 13th of February, I was on Kenmount Drive in St. Johns, Newfoundland (NOT Saint John, New Brunswick, DUH!), sitting in the parking lot of the Traveller's Inn, trying to dig my laptop out of the copious amounts of clothing which I'd piled up in the truck to keep me warm during previous nights of sleeping in the cab. Those nights had grown increasingly abusive on my body and I was determined to steal some Wifi and find a cheap motel in which I could crash. Now, after a year, I'm not convinced there are any really cheap hotels in Canada.

There was (luckily) nothing like the snow last February as we have this year, so driving around back then was much easier even though I got lost in town a lot. I was going to talk about how things have changed, but I continue to get lost in town a good deal. Now, though, I recognize the places in which I become disoriented. 'Ah, yes,' I think, 'I know this #$%*&ing area - I've been lost here before.'

Some things, of course, have changed. I know more about Newfoundland and Atlantic Canada's academic environment than I ever thought I would, and probably more than 99% of the human population. I am almost - again, in theory - halfway through my graduate education: three semesters out of six. During those semesters I've explored and rejected the possibilities of six or seven theses, but now I have a thesis topic and I sort of even kinda understand it. Mostly.

Well, there it is. A pretty insignificant, insular and fairly esoteric anniversary in the tragically uninteresting life of the oddest CFA (Come From Away = not born here) at Memorial University. It does however lend itself to a body of evidence: like spotting a tiny, blinking light in the distance though an icy North Atlantic wind-driven fog, it's proof that I'm still afloat. Raise your glasses, ya'll in Texas and Montana and California and Washington - I'm still alive and kicking.

It Begins

The Poop Neareth the Fan
or
Let the Games Begin

Dateline: St. John’s, Newfoundland (that’s in Canada). I went to Signal Hill today, desperately to avoid the MUN campus and its attendant crowds of undergrads and families carrying furniture and musical instruments into the dorms.

Signal Hill is a notably famous site among many such historical structures and localities in St. John’s – known as North America’s oldest city, the first North American city to see the sun rise, the easternmost community in North America, or occasionally sin city (from rural Newfoundlanders). Like many of these historical places, one cannot really talk about Signal Hill without starting at the beginning, which ‘round here usually takes one back to the 1600s if not earlier. I’m way too tired for that. Google ‘Parks Canada’ and ‘Signal Hill’ if ya want a tour.

Suffice it to say that I left Florida, where I lived among long-silenced coastal defense batteries, to live in the Officer’s Quarters of Fort Yellowstone, only find myself once again standing among coastal defense canons with a strategic view of my community. And yet I’ve never been a soldier.

Anyway, walking the hiking trails around the hill gives the observer great views of St. John’s Harbor, the city, the Narrows, the endless horizon of the North Atlantic and more gulls than I thought possible. A walker is also exposed to gale-force blasts of salt-laden air, which are locally termed ‘breezes’.

Being the tail end of the Labor Day holiday (excuse me, Labour Day), I was surrounded by tourists. Still, better that than the activity on campus, resembling as it does a disturbed anthill where the ants wear really big sunglasses and spotless white baseball caps.

Classes start on Wednesday, and it was only with some digging that I was able to determine when one of my classes meets, and where. I had to query students who’d already taken the class, as no such information is posted anywhere, online or otherwise. Sort of an academic oral tradition, I guess.

I don’t know which classes I’m TAing either. Makes it kind of hard to prep, as I see it, but I’m told not to worry. Teaching assistants fall in line after a Lead Lab Instructor and an Assistant Lab Instructor, both of which are professional, union positions. I’m sure you can imagine how important the contributions of grad students are under such circumstances.

Despite the promise of meaningless TAships, it was explained to me that, starting at sunrise on Wednesday, my future is best understood as ‘feeling like you’re running around with your hair on fire’. I’ve precious little hair to burn, but I have been a graduate student for eight months now and it’s probably about time that I actually spend some time in school. Minitab, here I come, ready or not.

Hurricanes? Again?

Given my tenure aboard a precariously thin barrier island situated along Florida’s northern gulf coast, I can honestly say that I’ve weathered my fair share of hurricanes. In those years, I somewhat grudgingly learned that despite the dangers and the inconveniences hurricanes bring, like most things in life, they have their upsides as well.

I recall those powerful tropical storms as the only force which could disturb the Floridian high-pressure Shangri-La – blue, cloudless skies, highs in the 90s (35 C), lows in the 70s (23 C). Indeed, a hurricane rolling in was one of the only things that could thin the crowds of tourists, so adamantly were they determined to be On Vacation. The winds created exciting surf from the usually flat, placid coastal waters of the gulf. Given the endlessly repetitive, admittedly perfect Florida summer days, storms provided some relief from the innocuous, mundane weather sought with fervor by vacationers, beach bums and sun worshipers.

The highly-organized weather systems which so often damaged and sometimes completely obliterated the frail human toeholds on the coast were in fact an ecological process with generally beneficial results for the rest of the gulf’s denizens. True, some sea turtle nests drown, and some nesting shorebirds colonies are flooded when the storm arrives, but the following season those turtles, terns and skimmers return to newly-created habitat, wrested from the grip of coastal plant succession and high-rise condos. Psychological escape from fair-weather boredom and the maintenance of ecological diversity: these things, at least to me, represented the benefits of hurricanes and tropical storms.

The less enjoyable aspects of hurricanes are well documented and innately understood by those who choose to live near the coast. The economic costs of the damage and the invariable post-storm cleanup, the disruption – and tragically – the loss of human lives, the days or weeks without power or roads, the flooding, the fear and worry.

I will likely be spared such serious consequences in my current location, situated on a hunk of ancient rock jutting out into a remote section of cold water in the north Atlantic. However, I have been horrified to find that I won’t be spared one of the more, well, as Lisa might be temped to say, annoying aspects of a hurricane season: incessant media coverage.

The current storm of interest to eastern Canada is named, sadly, Earl. I guess Edwin and Ernie were unavailable. I’ve already been through a hurricane named Earl, which I referred to as ‘the lame storm with the goofy name’.

This new storm called Earl is the subject of hourly updates by the local news agencies. Much like along the US coasts, the objective of the Canadian media is evidently to accurately pinpoint Earl every time he moves more than 12 miles. What is more, they too display every projected track (called ‘spaghetti diagrams’ on CBC; I don’t recall hearing that in the US), overlaid with the general track, various windspeed zones, and satellite photos. The importance of this intense effort is somewhat dampened by what folks like to call the Cone of Uncertainty.

Referring the large swath, at times stretching from the eastern coast of Newfoundland to Jacksonville, Florida, and often colored red to freak everyone out, forecasters admit – every freakin’ hour – that a hurricane may choose to make landfall anywhere in the Cone, contrary to any early predictions.

“Here’s what we know right now, ladies and gentleman, but this projection is 100 hours out and will likely change as time goes on.”

“Folks, you can see the storm right here on the map, and the projected landfall in five days is looking like here, although that will probably change.”

The size and force of the hurricane is always another source of nebulous information:

“Earl’s winds have increased 7 KPH and he is now a Category 4 storm!”

“Windspeeds have fallen by 4 KPH so Earl is now a Category 3.”

“Wait, we’re just received an update and Earl is now a Category 4 . . no, he’s back down to a 3 . . oh, just a moment, he may be a 4 again. Yes!”

I actually heard this morning that he's a '4 and a half'. I have to wonder if there is an albatross out there somewhere laughing about the human preoccupation with difference between 204 and 211 KPH winds.

And so, with a deep, calming, breath, I listen to update after update – and qualifying statements about how uncertain those prediction are – on TV each day. As an experienced storm watcher, though, I know that this is only the pre-game show: as the storm nears landfall, the media can only wait and make repeated guesses bolstered by reports from the Canadian Hurricane Center (I didn’t even know there was such a thing until a few days ago).

But once the hurricane begins battering its way onshore, however, the next phase begins. I can’t be sure about Canada’s media, but in the US it is customary to find the youngest or otherwise lowest-ranked member of the news staff, give them a North Face jacket, a mike, and a similarly undervalued cameraman, and then send them out into the storm. Anyone living in US hurricane country is familiar with the images of soaked, wind- and rain-pelted reporters, a species born in the proverbial shadows of towering eyewalls and swirling stormclouds, which for a brief time become a more frequent sight than disoriented frigate birds and floating cars (by the way, if you’re curious – Gore-Tex doesn’t breath in Florida).

I suppose I’ll just have to wait for landfall to see how the Canadian media handles the sea-land transition of violent low-pressure weather systems, although I don’t suspect it will be that different from the US. I’ll get hell for saying that, but there it is.

The concluding, and often most painful, stage of this process occurs once the storm has pushed inland. After the hurricane loses integrity and organization, the massive amount of moisture present in the storm falls as rain determined to make its way back to the sea as floodwater. The reporters then descend on ruined communities, seeking returning residents and the shock-numbed dumbasses who decided to ‘ride out the storm’. To get the scoop as to how they feel about the destruction of their homes and neighborhoods, you see. Particularly, it seems, they seek out the most thickly-accented, dentally-challenged people for such interviews. Well, Canada ain’t exactly lacking in rednecks, though their health care system promotes better tooth and gum care, so I’ll have to wait and see.