Wild, Slow-Burning Love

If you read my previous post, you know that Oldman and I went backpacking in the Smokies of North Carolina over spring break, and you know that we got caught in a thunderstorm.  Just after said thunderstorm, Oldman built a wonderful fire, despite the fact that all he had to use was wet wood and a little dryer lint we had brought from home.

He began by carefully making a 3-sided cave of larger, wet logs.  In the center of this cave, he placed a small pile of kindling, and a few pieces of dryer lint.  He lit the lint on fire.  It caught, and ignited one, tiny piece of kindling, which promptly went out from the moisture.  He tried again.  It lit again, burned a bit longer, and then also went out.

This lasted for about an hour.  Each time the fire lasted a bit longer, but inevitably gave way to the moisture in the wood.  He ever so patiently fed the little pile with fresh kindling, determined to get a fire going for us.  Meanwhile, I flitted about setting up the tent, cooking our dinner, and every now and then refurbishing his stock of kindling from what I could scavenge from the dark, wet ground around our camp.  And he sat patiently feeding and loving that little fire.

Finally, he got a flame to burn on its own for long enough to begin drying out the larger pieces of wood.  Before the night was through, we had a beautiful, roaring fire from which to warm up before tucking into our sleeping bags.

As I often do, I saw a metaphor in this act of nature.

That fire was like my relationship history.  It began with many intense, exciting bursts of flame.  Each one made me think, "Ooh!  He got a fire started!  This is gonna be great!" and then quickly, "Oh, it's out."  There was not enough fuel to keep those initial flames burning.  They were lit the "easy" way, with quickly-ignitable fuel like lint and paper.  They brought the instant gratification of a flame, but used up the fuel and died as briskly as they had flared up.

In the past, this is mostly how I have approached my relationships with men.  "Oooh, him!  Yes, him!  Wahoo, he's the one!  This is so fun!  We're so great!" and then, "Oh, it's over.  I'm bored/angry/offended/etc."

I've had a few "love at first sight" experiences in my life.  Being me, I ran headfirst into them, allowed my whole life to be consumed by their intensity, and never gave a thought to the lasting fuel it would take to keep them going.

Something I've noticed about this relationship with Oldman is that it has been a slow burn.  It was not love at first sight.  Not even love at second or third or fourth sight.  As you might remember from our how-we-met story, I was very much not looking for love.  And besides, Oldman was not even my type (meaning he was not a dirty, smelly, bearded, hippie/cowboy).  It took awhile for me to think of him as potential relationship material, and then to start spending time with him in that light.  Even then, it took awhile for me to think of us as anything other than a fun way to pass the winter until we both went our separate ways come June.

But once I opened up to the idea of us being US, that idea ignited another, bigger idea, which ignited another, bigger idea.  With patient tending, and no expectations, we have been slowly building a fire that is burning strongly on its own.  It is built from the real, sustainable fuel of experience, maturity, and selfless love.  There is very little ego, and very little drama.

I'm enjoying this experience of a slow burning relationship.  Can I keep myself from getting bored with the lack of Jerry Springer-like chaos?  I sure hope so.  Can I still feel like a strong, independent woman while loving a man?  Can any woman?  That is the big experiment in this relationship, I think.  How can I hold true to my identity, retain what is important to me, and make room for new, growing love?

I have long ago abandoned the idea of "The One," as has Oldman.  The lack of expectations about longevity or official titles gives us lots of room to breathe.  If we stop being an US today, or if we retain our US-ness until we are wrinkly and gray, living in some crazy commune in New Mexico with grown children named Rain and Ocean, I will chalk this up as a success.  Not looking for "The One" has given me the freedom to let Oldman be "the one for right now," and "right now" can be as long as we want it to be.

Here's to a slow burning love experiment.

Wild Smokies

I have hiked, camped, or backpacked in nearly every state in the northeast: Maine, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia - to name a few.  As soon as I made my decision to move west, I knew that there was just one place I needed to experience before leaving the beautiful Appalachians - the Great Smoky Mountains.

For spring break, Oldman and I dusted off our camping gear and headed south.  The weather forecast was  sunny and warm for days on end, we had enough dehydrated meals to last us a week of being stranded in the woods, and I was jumping out of my skin with excitement at the opportunity to sleep in my tent for the first time since November.

Upon reaching the ranger station near the entrance to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park near Gatlinburg, Tennessee, we were surrounded by people.  Little, screaming people.  Big, slow people.  Swarms of people with fanny packs and cameras.  Our first question to the ranger was, "Where should we go to get away from all of these people?"

She gave us a great tip on a 16 mile loop completely on the other side of the park, where she promised we would see virtually no one but bears. We had to drive two and a half more hours through the park, out of the park, through the Cherokee reservation, and back into a remote corner of the park on the North Carolina side.  It was totally worth it.

As we started down the trail, the sun was shining, the breeze was blowing, and there were butterflies everywhere.  Yellow swallowtails, black butterflies with purple spots, and dozens of little, purple butterflies.  They flitted around us and rested on our packs, heads, and fingers when we stopped for breaks.  I felt a little like Snow White.  I sort of looked up towards the sky and asked, to no deity in particular, "Really?  Could you possibly drum up a more beautiful setting?"

There are also waterfalls.  Tons and tons of waterfalls.  The river was next to us the entire first day's hike, and the whole river is pretty much large, moss-covered rocks and clear water crashing over them.  The smell of the water and foam combined with the fresh buds coming out on the trees and all around on the ground was intoxicating.

After many distracted detours into the river, we reached camp with plenty of time to set up, build a fire, and make some dinner.

The next morning was another beautiful one.  We were leisurely about getting out of camp.  It was hard to move fast when the woods seemed to be in no hurry to get anywhere.  After about four hours of drinking coffee and tea, eating breakfast, filtering drinking water for the day, and packing up, we headed to our day's destination: Gregory Bald.

We hiked pretty hard all day (except for a long lunch break in which there might have been some very cold swimming in the river with very little clothes on. . . good thing the trail was so secluded. . .), including 3000 feet of elevation gain in about four miles.  Yikes.

About two miles from the summit, a monster thunderstorm hit.  On my various backpacking adventures, I've run into grizzly bears, moose, snakes, and getting lost, but never a thunderstorm.  We donned our rain gear, but began to reconsider hiking all the way up to the open bald on the top of a mountain to set up our tent with metal poles and sleep in it for shelter from the lightening. . . hmmm.

About a mile from the top, still pouring rain with lots of thunder and lightening, we found a flat area where we could set up a makeshift camp for the night.  Technically, you are only allowed to camp at pre-marked backcountry sites.  This was not one, but it would have to do for tonight.  The only problem was water. We were almost out, because we had been counting on the spring we heard ran through the campsite at the top of the bald.  We dropped our packs, covered them as best as possible, and ran ahead with just our bottles and filter pump in the hopes that we might find some water.

We came across a tiny trickle running down the mountain.  It was a viable source for filtering, but not nearly deep enough to even get our filter hose into.  Oldman set to work on a system of rocks and leaves that created a spout-type flow from which we could fill our bottles.  Then we simply filtered from one bottle to the next until we had debris-free water to boil for dinner and drink in the morning.  Brilliant!

By the time we got back to camp, it had stopped raining.  I set up camp while Oldman somehow magically made a fire out of completely wet wood.  We ate, dried off, warmed up, and were pretty happy campers.  We fell asleep reading Orson Scott Card fiction aloud to each other off of my kindle in the tent. What a great night.

The next day brought the return of the beautiful weather, and the enchanted forest came alive with buds, butterflies, and beauty once again.

We reached our goal - the summit and Gregory's Bald - and sauntered back down the mountain with aching feet and joyful hearts.  If this first trip of the season is any indication of what is to come this year in our backcountry adventures, we have much to look forward to!  Be blessed, my friends.  The earth is beautiful and the sun is on its way.

Wild WILD

Last night, I picked up my copy of WILD, by Jay Griffiths, the book that inspired this blog and much of my journey west last summer.  It is also the book from which the quote at the top of my blog came.  WILD is a memoir of sorts, and a travel book of sorts.  This woman, Jay, travelled through some of the most wild places on earth, from northern Alaska to Papua New Guinea, living with the native people there, learning from them more about what it means to truly be wild.  This book took her seven years to write.  It is raw.  It is beautiful.  It is brave.

So last night I picked it up again, just to flip through and read some of the parts I had underlined in my first read.  I got chills once again, accompanied by the overwhelming desire to jump out of my chair and run, singing, from here to California and back - just to scratch my insatiable itch for wild adventure.

So here, for your pleasure, are some of what I say are the most inspirational parts to what I say is one of the most inspirational books:

"I know this chloroform world where human nature is well schooled, tamed from childhood on, where the radiators are permanently on mild and the windows are permanently closed."

"What is kind and what is wild do not contradict each other."

". . . an Inuktitut word, nuannaarpoq, as 'taking extravagant pleasure in being alive."

"The keen urge has never left us to take a flitting tent and fling it under the stars, then swing on, on at dawn, on an elemental journey.  That is how to burn most brightly.  That is how to catch like wildfire."

"Nothing in nature is suburban.  Nothing wild is phlegmatic and complacent.  Nothing compares to the grotesque infantilism of the suburbs, sucking the dummy of the supermarket and every week squirting out the waste into giant plastic nappies, the bulging trash bags by the closed gate.  In the suburbs, the alertness of all wild creatures is degraded into neurotic curtain-twitching."

"Sensible habits and good road safety skills will keep you alive till eighty.  So what?  If you didn't know freedom, you never lived, never knew that thrilling whisper, turning blood to quicksilver, reflecting sheer fear and pleasure - to be most alive is to be most free is to be most wild."

"There is no compromise.  Freedom is not polite.  It doesn't knock or telephone first.  It slams its hand down on your desk and says Dance - as the mad fiddler, his fingers bleeding on the strings, plays an elegy at the speed of a reckless waltz till the sky breaks down in tears."

"In the wilds, we cannot be controlled or policed or pacified.  In the wilds is our political autonomy.  Cry Freedom in all the mountains that have ever heard the rebel yell and suburbia, malleable clay to fascism, can go to hell."

"Europeans have long been fond of claiming that a paradise from which mankind was expelled is a universal truth.  But . . . Heaven is under our feet, wrote Thoreau; paradise can be here and now - in fact now is the only possible time to ransack paradise and suck up its juices.  We are not exiled from the garden of Eden but living in it still.  Paradise is not in the past or future but only in the present, this Earth an untamed heaven, a wild paradise garden."

"Just at the point when you can no longer speak, sing.  Just at the point when you can no longer get out of bed, fly.  Pain can give you wings."

Wild Bunny Hill Graduation

This is not me, but it's pretty much what I look like on the slopes at this point.

By the way, that caption is quite a sarcastic over-exaggeration, in case you are socially challenged and can't tell.


Last Friday, I went snowboarding for the third time this season, which means I went snowboarding for the third time in my life.  It had been at least a month since the previous time, and I was afraid that any minuscule progress I might have made was certainly lost in the gap.   I expected to start all over again - falling off of the lift, falling when I stand, falling down the hill, pretty much just falling.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that my body had retained the muscle memory.  I stood rather easily on the board, and my first time down the bunny hill that night was also my first time all the way down the hill without falling once!  I was thrilled.  Oldman suggested that I move on to the green slope, but I wanted to take one more trip down the bunny hill just to be sure that first run wasn't a fluke.  The second time down the bunny hill was successful as well.  I was ready.

The lift up to the green slope was faster and longer than the bunny hill lift.  I knew right away that I was in for some more challenging boarding.  Add to that the fact that the line to even get onto the lift was longer, and the hill itself was much more crowded.  More people to possibly run into, or who might run into me when I'm sprawled out from a fall.  This was serious business.

To my delight, I remained mostly vertical.  Not only did I stay upright, but my board was beginning to actually do what I wanted it to do.  Before, I felt completely at the mercy of this board that was throwing me downhill willy-nilly in every which way.  Now I was able to use toe side and heel side turns to navigate around other people, away from the edge, and around curves.  I could use my heel side perpendicularly against the hill to brake when I wanted to slow down, whereas before the only strategy I had for slowing down was to hurl myself butt-first onto the hill and roll to a stop.  For the first time, I felt like I was actually snowboarding - not just falling down the slope with a snowboard attached to my feet.

I graduated from the bunny hill!

And this, my friends, is where I began to see the metaphor.  I turn 30 in less than two weeks.  I've been thinking a lot about all that I know now that I didn't in my twenties.  Mostly, how I deal with situations that arise in my life differently than I would have in my twenties.

For example, Oldman and I have been navigating some to-be-expected and less-than-pleasant relationship "stuff" lately.  (Hey it's the three month mark - the shit always hits the fan around then, am I right?)  In the past, I might have responded with desperate clinging, sad ploys for attention, and very unflattering displays of rage followed by bouts of uncontrollable crying and self-loathing.  (Aren't you regretting that you didn't date me in my twenties?  I was a ball of fun.)  This time, I just went to spaworld by myself instead.

Or all this struggle I've been having at work this year - being crazily overworked with 50-65 hour workweeks at a job that I know I don't want anymore.  In the past, I would have sulked my way through the day, taken fake sick days, and tried to break my contract and quit early.  This time, for the most part, I have been staying present, looking for the gems in each day, and laughing at the chaos.

You might say, in essence, that I've graduated from the bunny hill.  As I approach 30, I am moving on to the green slope of life.

Now of course I didn't always choose the most mature reaction to the above situations.  Of course there was some minor clinging and crying in regards to the relationship stuff, and of course there were some sulky days and fantasizing about cutting the cord early at work.  But WAY less than before.  The duration of my unpleasant reactions was much shorter, and much less intense.  Just like with snowboarding - even though I "graduated" to the green slope, I still fell sometimes.  Even though I mostly knew how to control my board, I still spun around a few times accidentally.

I'm sure there will be more reflective posts in the next couple of weeks about turning 30.  For now, suffice to say that I am grateful to be moving on to greener pastures.  I am more than happy to leave that bumpy bunny hill behind.

Wild Cycles

Yeah, that whole famous quote about it being darkest before dawn, and all that.

Dear readers,
This blog is about wildness - being wild and living wildly in every sense of the word.  I created it to write about being a wild woman, which is a status I say that most of us once held, and somewhere in the past several generations, have lost.  I don't claim to have fully come into this identity yet, but I am writing about the process in the hopes of inspiring others to find that wild place inside of themselves and let it see the light of day.

Sometimes being a wild woman means going on adventures - thus my posts about backpacking, ice-climbing, snowshoeing, rock-climbing, and snowboarding.  Sometimes being a wild woman means living in wild relationships - thus my posts about friendships, about not wanting to fall in love, and those about falling in love anyway.  I know how much my readers enjoy reading my posts about the "mountaintop" moments in my life, literally and figuratively, and I am glad to provide them for you.

But living a wild life in a society that does not readily encourage wildness, especially from women, can at times be a rather difficult experience.  While the majority of the time, I am grateful to be alive and spreading positivity and rainbows everywhere I go, sometimes I'm, well - I'm not.  Sometimes I'm too confused.  Sometimes I'm too overwhelmed.  Sometimes I'm just plain exhausted and not feeling wild at all.

As you have seen, I think it is important to blog about those times, too.  Because if the point of this blog is to open my "journey to wildness" up to the greater world, I want to present a complete picture.  And while those sadder posts may be more difficult or uncomfortable for some people to read, they are an honest portrayal of my journey at that time.  I know life as a constant cycle of rising and falling; of yin and yang.  I am me and I am wild in all parts of this cycle, not just the ones full of happiness and rainbows.

While I feel strongly that it matters to write about these darker times, I also want to write about how I pull myself out of them.  Because just like the darkness in the sky that rocks us to sleep each night, these dark times do not last.  They, like the happy times - like all kinds of times - are temporary.

So what was it this time?  What pulled me out of this particular journey to "the dark side?"

Well first, I slept.  I stopped running around and filling every moment of my schedule.  I started going to bed earlier (like, ridiculously early), and started sleeping a bit later in the morning, even going in to work late a few days to make this possible.

Second, I stopped trying to please everyone.  I allowed myself to not make that phone call to an old friend that I'd been meaning to make, and to not go to that family wedding I'd promised to attend.  I admitted that no matter what I do at work, I will always leave with unfinished tasks, and someone will usually choose to be disappointed in that.  I reminded myself that if I am doing the best I can, their disappointment does not have to be my disappointment.  I am not always the perfect employee, the perfect friend, the perfect daughter, or the perfect girlfriend.  And that has to be ok.

Third, I talked with trusted women in my life who could empathize with me, and at the same time, slap me in the face and tell me to snap out of my self-indulgent pity party.  (Notice I did not say that I talked with Oldman about it.  There are some things in life that only women can do for each other.  I've learned that the hard way.  Many times.  I simply told Oldman that I'm battling something fierce right now and asked him to be patient with me while I work it out.  I assured him that I'd be "back" soon, and that my love for him holds firm through all of it.  And because he's amazing, he understood, and gave me space.)

This brings me to my fourth strategy: I spent time alone.  On Friday night, I returned home to a note on the door from Oldman saying that he had gone for a 30 mile night bike ride down the C&O canal, and wouldn't be home until late.  Rather than feel sorry for myself or try to fill the time with some loud distraction, I decided to go to spa world, by myself, for the whole evening.  I spent four hours there, soaking in the saunas and jacuzzis, reading, journaling, and getting massaged (a.k.a. beaten to a pulp by an old Korean woman).  When I returned home at 2am, Oldman was home from his bike ride, and I don't think we've ever been happier to see each other.  A few hours spent apart, doing what was healthy for each of us, was the best way to be closer.

Fifth and finally, I simply chose to be done in the darkness.  I had logically examined many possibilities for leaving Maryland early, and in the end, none of them came with consequences that I am willing to live with right now.  I am living here, right now, and that is all that really exists.  I reminded myself to stop living in a hypothetical future which may or may not ever come.  I put on my big girl pants and told myself to stop it already.  So I did.

I wrote this post partially for you, my readers, so you could rest assured that I am "happy" once again.  But mostly, I wrote it for me - so next time I take a trip to the dark side, when I am ready to come out and I may have forgotten how, I can read this post and remember a few ways that have worked in the past.

But for now, since I am approaching the upswing portion of the cycle, stay tuned for more posts about mountaintop experiences, crazy adventures, and of course, unicorns and rainbows.

Yours truly,
Melanie

Wild Tiger

There is a wild animal inside of me.

He is a tiger, and he is currently in a cage.  He does not want to be domesticated.  He does not want to be cute and cuddly.  He has been pacing. And pacing.  And pacing.  And planning his escape.

Sometimes I feel him bump up against the inside of my ribs, or my gut, or my brain.  He is pushing on all surfaces, trying everything to escape back into the wild.  He flares his lips and roars a deep, vibrating roar.  He shows his fangs and does not apologize.

He is not angry.  He is not vengeful.  Do not anthropomorphize him with unnecessary emotion.  He is simply wild, and very, very out of place.

I don't really know how he got there.  Perhaps I was born with him inside.  Perhaps as I've grown, so has he.  I've felt his paws nudge me at moments throughout my life.  When I was stuck in something that wasn't right for me - a relationship, a town, a job, a mindset - he began pacing.  And pawing.  And sending low grumbles of a roar through my body.  Warnings.

GET OUT.  GET OUT OR YOU'LL BE SORRY.  THIS IS NOT WHERE YOU BELONG.

I've been feeling him lately.  Pacing, pawing, grumbling, roaring.  I hear him as I sit in traffic on the beltway.  I feel him in in the tears that have become a regular part of my morning commute.  I see him in my dreams at night.  I wake up flailing in bed, moaning from an endless string of nightmares.

GET OUT.  THIS IS NOT WHERE YOU BELONG.

I try to talk to friends and family about this tiger.  I can't call him a tiger, of course.  No one would actually believe that I have a wild animal living inside of me.  But I tell them about how I know it is time for me to go.  Not soon.  Not in the summer.  NOW.

And they tell me all the things that humans say, of course.  "There are lessons to be learned in finishing things well.  Just hang in there."  GROWL.  "Be grateful for this opportunity to grow."  GROWL.  "Find enjoyable things to do while you're still here in Maryland."  GROWL.

I know they mean well.  I would say the same things to me if I were them.  They just don't know about the tiger.  They can't understand that he is not patient.  He does not care about the polite, responsible thing to do.  He doesn't even know what that means.  All he knows is that he is wild, which makes me wild, and that the both of us, together, are in the wrong place.

I don't know what will happen to me if I don't give him what he wants, and soon.  I fear that he will claw right through my center and tear me to shreds in his caged-up fury.  But although I live with a tiger, I'm not a tiger.  I do care about the right thing to do.  I don't want to disappoint people or fail to live up to my word.  How can I explain that to him?  He is not a good listener.

I think those close to me are starting to notice that something is off.  This tiger is making me act strangely. I'm not my best self.  People wonder if I'm depressed.  They can't be around me for too long.  They don't know that I'm just trying to hold this tiger at bay for a few more months.  I wish they knew how hard it is to control a wild tiger - especially one that is currently pacing in between your ribs, poking the soft, fleshy places with his claws.

So I have been sleeping a lot lately.  It is quite exhausting trying to be a mediator between the tiger inside and the rest of the world outside.  While I understand both of them, they don't seem to understand each other.  Do they need to?

I have spent much more time trying to appease the world outside, because that is what everyone else sees.  But my tiger doesn't like that.  He doesn't like that at all.  So lately, I've been giving in to the tiger, in little places here and there.  Doing what I want and not doing what I don't want, regardless of whether the outside world understands.

But the tiger wants more.  He wants bigger movement.  Bigger change.  He wants the wild.  And his claw is piercing out from my heartspace even as I write this.  His roar is rattling through my chest.  Can't you hear it?

Wild Yoga Fire

This morning, I attempted to go to yoga class.  This was my second time at this new studio in Rockville.  The studio has a beautiful jungle theme with fake plants everywhere - vines hanging along all of the walls and draping from the ceilings, shrines of rock, plants, and candles in every corner.

To begin class, the teacher had us sit with our eyes closed and chant a mantra together.  As we were chanting, I began to smell something odd.

"Om nama shivaya. Om nama shivaya."

Man, that is some crappy incense.


"Om nama shivaya, gurave. . ."

I don't think that's incense.  I think something's - 


"FIRE!' someone yelled from the hallway.

A girl from my class threw open the door to the studio, and the room instantly filled with smoke.  I peeked out and saw that the entire hallway was engulfed in flames.

"Blankets!  Bring blankets!" a man yelled.  We all started handing our yoga blankets to him as he and a few others smothered the flames as best as they could.

Then I noticed how filled with smoke the air was, and that I was feeling a little dizzy.  I grabbed my shoes, socks, and coat from along the wall in the smoky hallway, put a yoga blanket over my mouth and nose as I rolled up my mat in the studio, and ran out the back door, encouraging others to do the same.  Soon we were all outside with our rolled up yoga mats, shivering together, watching the fire trucks roll in.

Apparently, someone's jacket had fallen off of a hook in the hallway into a candle, and ignited the whole, plastic jungle.  I realized that there was no way any classes would be able to be held, so I sat in my car for awhile, waiting for the fire trucks to clear the parking lot so I could get out.

Sitting in the quiet shell of my car, parked directly in front of the studio, I watched the action in front of me like a slow-motion, silent movie.  Fire-fighters ran in the building and emerged with piles of blackened, smoking yoga blankets, shoes, jackets, purses, and plastic jungle leaves.  Huddles of women in yoga pants stood in groups around the parking lot, clutching their mats, telling the story to each other, each from their perspective.

And what I noticed was that no one seemed upset, or scared.  People were smiling, helping each other, even laughing.  And I was reminded of the whole cycle of experience; I went from peacefully chanting in a meditative state, to pretty much the most heightened state of movement and action one can have.

I took a moment in gratitude for my capable body that got me out of there in time.  I was also grateful for the smooth, calm way in which the yoga teachers and studio owners put out the fire, ushered people outside, and moved peacefully, yet effecively, through the whole situation.  I was grateful for the fire fighters who were on the scene in under three minutes.  And mostly, of course, I was grateful that the only thing that burned were material possessions.  What a perfect reminder of impermanence.

Namaste.