Internal thoughts at 700ft, hanging from the Face of the Flat Iron

Boulder, CO

(Andrew, perched on top of a rock with Brea):

Don't look down. Don't look out. Ah, shit, this is the side of a slab, it's impossible not to look out into the distance. How high are we, 500 ft, 600? Ok, just hug this rock, yeah this will work. I'll spread my legs around this....why is this position called a junk smear? What Brea. You want me to tidy up the rope, up here? Are you out of your mind.

Why do people do this? Why are we so far above the ground? I'll jump, then I'll be on the ground, but then I'll be dead. Ok, calm down, sing a song. 'We are young...'

(Brea, belaying matt as he climbs out of sight):

This is quite comfortable right here. Ugh, where is matt, over that ridge? Yes andrew, we are very very high, I got it. I wish Matt would say something to let me know he's alright. I can't believe he just tried to stick that cam up my butt. (Matt shouts from his spot over the ridge) I have no idea what he just said. Andrew did you hear him. No. Whattt? God, why does he have the vocal capacity of a three-year-old girl. O, look at that hawk, that's a graceful bird. O well, I'll just sing a song. '...no one can tell us we're wrong'

(Matt, leading the climb, placing protection into cracks along the way)

Ah, this is so peaceful up here, so far away from everything...(brea shouts to matt), ugh, is that brea, o well, I'll just ignore her and tell her I couldn't here her.

Hand-Gun Sport Fishing

Out beyond Sitka sound, our small fishing boat- amidst the mountains, the islands, and the commercial ships- must have looked no more than a toy bobbing in a swimming pool. Eileen and I stayed quiet as Joesef grunted, readjusted his now blistering hands, and yelled that he definately saw 'something.' Tyler, our captian, told Eileen to look through his backpack for his handgun.
'Will I really need to shoot the fish?'
' If its over 100 pounds, sometimes it's just the easiest way to kill it...no wait, its big, but just hand me that gaff.'
'What?'
'The mallet with the hook at the end."

At the end of the run, pulling in 1000 feet of line from dark waters, we stood on the rocks staring at a 50+ pound halibut and three ling cods, roughly 20 pounds each. I can't really take too much credit, I basically stood back with my mouth gaping as tyler crushed each one's skull.
We now have enough fish to get us through the fall, which helps when you have 300 dollars worth of grocery money between 5 people for the month.

The Final Frontier

"Just talk to the bear in a regular voice. I just say, 'hey bear, Hi. I'm here.' You know, let him know you're human...What you absolutely do not want to do is turn around and run, becuase then, you will just look like food."

Within our first 24 hours in Sitka, my fellow housemates and I are invited to a dinner party by a former Jesuit Volunteer (JV) who is now a local. This is a friend of his letting us know what to do when we see a grizzly on the trail. 'Don't be surprised if you see one while hiking, or even on a run.' We are told we will have plenty of adventures, which could be as simple as a hike that begins from our front door. Another guy at the party lets us know that any time we want to get out fishing, to simply give him a call. Another offers us kayaks. The night is cut short, tragically, due to an accident. A small two engine plane, low on fuel and en route to sitka, has lost contact with the airport. Matthew, our host, is a volunteer for the area's search and rescue group.
And so begins my year as a jv in Sitka, Alaska. Remarked by many-a-cruise-passenger to alaska to be one of the most beautiful places they have ever seen. It has only been a couple of days now, and I am taking the week off to get to know the town and my new 'community' (Josef, Eileen, Meg, and Whitney). We will spend this week visiting each other's placements, and if today is any example, learning to get out rain or shine. Probably rain. Hopefully I will also spend some personal time understanding our financial situation, as the house book keeper.
For those entirely out of the loop (as I was), here are a few quick demographics tid-bits.

Population - approx 9,000
Weather - Average annual rainfall is 86 inches (2,200 mm); annual average snowfall is 39 inches (990 mm) - Seattle's average rainfall is 37.1 inches (which is not actually all that much)
Geography - Mount Edgecumbe, a 3,200-foot-tall dormant stratovolcano, is located on southern Kruzof Island. It can be seen on a clear day from Sitka
Weather, cont'd - I have yet to see the sun since landing. It has rained three times today.

Some upcoming activities include kayaking (wednesday) and salmon watching, as they are traveling upstream to lay eggs and sadly perish (I hear the smell is god awful).

I will update soon with a picture, and keep checking your mailboxes for post cards.

witches brew

Evo owes me $100. Horse riding through the devil´s door. Water balloons in the streets. Coca is not a drug. Walk on water. Se puede tocar. Llama fetuses.

(A LATE POST, from a past draft)



I started my journey through bolivia in the small border town of Villazon, after paying the 100 dollar visa fee imposed this past december. Somehow during my 40-50 hours of bus travel, it slipped my mind that I would be arriving in southern bolivia during carnaval. And although it has become a major event in Rio, for those of you who aren´t aware of some of its costums, I´ll briefly mention a few. Toting super-soaker style water guns. Drinking. Throwing water balloons at bystanders. Drinking. Spraying foam out of a can at bystanders. Driving around in a produce-truck type oversized pick-up truck, drinking, singing, dancing, and of course, dumping buckets of water at bystanders. The key is, not to be a bystander. Its as easy as carrying around a bottle of water, so when a ten year old points his water weapon at you and tells you to put your hands up, you can chase him around a car and let him have it. ha ha ha. SO what if he was ten.
It should also be understand that if public transportation has not ceased, it will be necessary to get up at 5am to buy a ticket.
Luckily, with the help of my mate, I was able to get a ticket on the train headed north and through the window I gazed out on a landscape thats compared to the American southwest. Accordingly, once in Tupiza, I threw my leg over a horse and galloped away. I had never really ridden a horse before, its exhilerating, yet painful. Again trapped by Carnaval, I got involved and invited to a local couple´s courtyard bbq. Although the host gasped, only responding GRINGO in response to my native country, I recieved a warm welcome. A strange mix of middle aged folk, including a musician from Tupiza, a dentist from Miami, and a sauced couple from la paz, joined together to eat steak and ahi off the grill, and share pitchers of sangani ( a rum like liquor mixed with lemon and sprite). After badmouthing bush, evo, castro, and every other political leader he could compare to a tyrant, the host told me I was his corazon (heart). We danced salsa, I tried, till midnight when half of the guests departed and the three other extranjeros retired to their hostal. I was invited by the miami doctor and blanca, a woman who kept trying to teach me the correct dance steps, to the local discotech. I dont turn down invitations from locals, and this I believe is the best way to experience local culture. Earlier in the day this meant chewing coca leaves and making an offering to pachamama, the incan goddess, but now it meant dancing till 5am. Sometimes its hard, but you must accept gracefully.
Next was a tour of the southwest region of bolivia. The drive in an off road jeep winds through hills, past reflecting lakes and dali-esque landscapes, down towards the border with chile and back north ending in the Salar de Uyuni- the world´s largest salt flat. The salar is currently covered in a couple inches of water, turning the massive plane into a giant mirror. Mountaints out in the distance look like shipwrecks, and the jeeps driving over it seem to be slowly crossing a lake. Ironically, in the face of all this splendor, I think the most popular activity on the salar, is taking silly photos capable due to the flat perspective. You can stand on a waterbottle, walk out of a can of pringles, or hold a truck in the palm of your hands. Aside from this, there´s plenty of time to stare at the pink flamingoes wading over the red lake.
In bolivia its easy to get high. The drive through the southwest crossed over platues at over 5000 meters, and Potosi, where I took the next bus to is claimed to be the worlds highest city, just over 4000 meters. The constant habit of chewing coca leaves can help, although I personally prefer the tea. The sun is still strong, and the chill at night kept me under a mound of blankets. Potosi is famous for its silver mines, which were sacked by colonialists for hundreds of years mainly for currency production. Ironically, the city´s own moneycomes from canada, where it is much cheaper to produce. Tours to the mines, which are still opperational, are advertised like trips to disney land, ´workers´ and tourists standing around a pickup waving under hard hats. The average life span for a worker once under the ground is ten years. I opted out of the tour.

Sucre was one of those places while travelling where I just didn´t get my fill. Nestled in rolling green mountains, an ongoing characterstic of western south-american cities, its mix of colonial churches, palm trees, a university population, and that familiar central-market charm. It was a great last week in bolivia, with new allies from canada, chile, france, and a few blocks from my hostal. Museums and reading in ex-pat cafes during the day. Nights at discotecs till 5am. Waving from the bus window, andre in the seat next to me, holding me hand.

And then there were two days in La Paz - dingy, polluted, and the smell of a dried lama fetus just outside my hostal, its a traditional good luck charm.

patagonia: ´and I got loaded on a cup of air ´

4 Days on the road, Sick under the endless Sun, the Chacla, Rasberries out the ears, Clay oven pizzas, Local Brews, rock skiing, clutching dictionaries in Spanish, English and French

It was tough to leave Montanita. The surf wasexcelent, christmas at midnight with a hodgpodgegroup of artesans and musicians, and new yearseve on the beach with fireworks and dancing untildawn. Not to mention amigos y amantes. I made a hasty departure, as if dashing in an escape, and in mere days, after nearly 50 hours in buses and 5 hours in the sky, I arrived in the lake district of Northern Patagonia, one of the most picture-esque settings Ive ever experienced. Adourned with reflecting lakes the andes stretch out, dusted by powder snow, under a giant sky lit until late in the evening. As the sun sets the breeze bends the evergreens, the tall grass of the valleys underneath dance a slow one, and clouds take the shape of soft ufos, discs of dark grey touching down on the peaks.

For the past week and a half I´ve been settling in on the chacla (farm), born and nurtured by Claudio and Rosalind, truly people of the earth. The schedual, as most everything here, is very relaxed (muy tranquilo). Breakfast at 9, work until 1, lunch, a mandatory siesta (yes, they have nap time here), followed by another session of work from 5 until 8 or 9, and then dinner sometime in the late, but still sunny evening. I seemed to arrive at the right (or wrong?) time-- as originally I thought, sure Ill take a break, live on a farm, live Walden and learn some farming techniques. Its harvest season, and for this week, that meant hours upon hours of picking frambuezas (ripe rasberries). But there is much to learn otherwise.

Claudio and Rosalind are both creative, energetic people, while calm and flexible like the surrounding trees. Ive been learning a bit about cooking whole and natural foods from Rosalind, while Claudio is teaching me the finer points of making terrible facades of potentially useful works of art on the potters wheel. For those of you who have never seen or attempting throwing clay, it is an entirely engrossing experience, requiring a zen like focus. You see the wheel, you see a small vase, you think, ah I could do that. It looks so simple and graceful when done with experience. When I do it, it looks like a monkey playing with his own shit. But I continue to strive for something beautiful.


And there is history, I recently, in a slow and painful conversation (because the spanish here is different and even more difficult for me to understand) talked to Rosalind about her imprisonment for a year, while she was only 20 years old during the 70s. One of the most revealing aspects of traveling to certain areas of the world is putting flesh faces and tangible stories to the distance of textbooks and headlines. Here in reference to the Dirty War and dissapearing peoles of Argentina during the 70s and 80s, that are still missing and effecting present history. The same was true in Zimbabwe, as I heard stories under a dictator, that are only beginning to be published and made available to the outside world.

There are a few other interesting farm hands. In the cottage I live in, hand built of stone and local logs by Claudio, there is Clement from france-inhabiting the room adjacent mine. In the evenings, sometimes over bottles of beer, red wine, or mugs of mint tea, we clutch dictionaries, usually me with mine -english spanish- and clement with his-french to spanish, trying to have a meaningful conversation in a language that neither of us know by tongue. Sometimes he goes to english, and we have conversations in another language, in equally demented and diminished sentences. Usually we talk about travelling or how we now have dreams of rasberries, but sometimes I have to search the dictionary for words like anger, and ´I know what Im talking about dammit´when arguing about whether or not hardcore-techno is an underground craze in the states. -not that Im saying there arent clubs somewhere in NYC and LA ravin with dawn dancers. Then there are Max and Eva, who live in a room above the pottery workshop. After attending school in some liberal section of Cali max accordingly did the right thing and moved to a more natural, organic zone for art and an actual education in argentina. If he isnt potting something, he is writing and practicing music, and at the moment, he and eva, a visiting friend from the states, are giving a workshop in a nearby town on natural building and architecture. They also were the spark for killer pizzas that we baked in the orno that was built for firing clay. Pizzas cook really fast in an 800 degree oven.


Andrews Musing -fair warning-

I get the impression, and doubt Im alone, that at home in the states and lets say ´present society´in a fast-paced, dominating nation, even though I hate the whole society reference, I get the impresion that simplicity is misunderstood. Its looked down upon as simple. Not simple in a natural, organic, practicle way, but simple of the negative slur used for a handicapped child. Its laziness, its not cutting-edge or fast-paced, its not technologically sound, its not going to get you ahead, and its not really going to do any good for anyone. After a few weeks here, and time spent in a general way, living simply. I must ardently dissagree.
Here people live stereotypically simply, and I have rarely been surrounded by people so inspired, and so driven to live and work, without an access of stress and imbalane. Aside from building their own house and raising their own farm, Claudio and Rosalind constantly take in volunteers to share stories and lessons. And currently, Claudio, an engineer by trade, is designing a health center for a nearby town. People I have met from the area are generally interested in conversation, giving you an opinion on art or politics over mate, and probably, in their spare time, have some artisitc project going on, even if its simply tending a garden. Im not currently pushing for socialism or a revert back to the ways of the woods, all Im saying, is Simple living is not so simple. In its quiet there plays music, in its nature there grows a complex life cycle, and in its slow cooking there is nutrition. Never to sound trite, or cliched, or like an tired hippy verse- but take time to breath, and you can hear the earth breath back. Its refreshing, and yes, its quite simple.

Burning man

(new years, 2008, montanita, ecuador_midnight on the beach)

They burned him in a ceremony,
the fires, the charges shouting from the ground
flames dancing also,
with the bodies
stars exploding in the sky
no, its just our celebration,
erupting from the earth

They burn characters and relatives,
paper and paint
not knowing what each person
hoped to forget,
hoped to create out of the ashes
years past

I danced too, with natives
laughed with ´columbia´
as he showed me rhythms
like this
like this
lean,
with your sholders
crouch,
with your feet
´la alma nunca es cansada´
(the soul never tires)
he shouts, his hair tired,
gold tooth shining by the moon

well into the night,
the black horizon over the ocean
where crazies run off with surfboards, like spears
into the first waves, of the new year
the moon pulls me into the ocean
thrashes me, and drowns me
I am new
with the shells,
seen for the first time on the shores
but weathered, colored, and beautiful
from years spent
creating
in the sea

EPIC.

On the second day of five on our route to Machu Picchu, the snow-capped Salkantay peak stabbed through the misty clouds into the pale sun-lit sky. It was sunny and I posed for a picture that marked the altitude at 3800 meters. I headed up towards the steep pass with two others, leaving a few behind and thought nothing of the drifting snow flurries in the air. But the flurries collected capacity, and after a few minutes I was huddled under a rock, looking for my gloves, a hat, and some way to protect my pack. After listening to new zealand John's unhappiness over not having remembered his waterproof pants, I realized that my 100 percent cotton beach-slacks, were entirely soaked through. Luckily I had remembered to put on my thermals, but those were becoming more and more like a wet napkin stuck to my skin. My private area was particularly chilled. In short, I was on the side of a lush green mountain, with jagged red rocks breaking through a damp ground and all the time freezing my nuts off.

Within 30 minutes I reached the highest point of our pass, covered in snow and fog at over 4000 meters. Alex snapped a shot of John and I building small, balanced, temples as offers to ancient inca gods, all along thinking, if you get me down off this mountain and dry again I'll sacrifice a calf, a cat, a small child, whatever you want, so long as I dont have to sacrifice myself to hypothermia. It was merciless, and it wasn´t just my thinking weakly. Alex said at one point, I just thought, Im getting down, sorry Erin, Holly, 13 year old Kear, I'll come back for you if and when I get down and back into the light of day. ITs every trekker for himself.

Actually, I think Alex and I enjoyed it the most. As we trugged down the other end, out of the falling slush and mist, we momentarily looked back to make sure Golum himself wasnt at our toes. I thought I was a hobbit, it was entirely epic. And a couple of days later my feet were so swollen you'd have to believe the story. By the end of the day we hiked past a peak, through snow, and down into a muggy, wet jungle setting. Our camp ground that night, like every other, was stunning, surrounded by mountains and pure air.

The hike itself was magnificent, but perhaps the truely epic journey was our 24 hour 5th day. After walking up over 1400 twisting, broken, uneven steps beginning at 430 AM we had made it to the world wonder that is Machu Picchu. Aside from the lost city, the setting itself is more than enough to take your breath away, with a few small peaks jutting out of the ground like stalagtites out of the cave floor. After another 45 minutes hiking up one of these narrow nolls your can lie under the clouds and look down on that classic view of the ruins.

That night we had to say our goodbyes to the group and we ended up out in Cuzco till 430, again, and by this time the light looked about the same, blue, hazy, and like a lagoon I could have fell right in, off the curb into puddles. Luckily I kept my balance and danced shamelessly to reggaeton and whatever american hip-hop that was tossed into the mix. Alex had the six step, and I was surely inventing a new slide move. Never got into the syncronized salsa, with the timed claps and syncopated steps, but the micky mouse club of peru seemed to enjoy it.
We finally took a vacation from our vaction on the last day in cuzco, dropped out pants and got all lathered up. ´Mesaje, masaje, good price for you my friend´ and for an hour 10 dollars was an excellent price.

Moving on its back to the daily bus grind to get to montanita before christmas. I´ll be in a bungalo but my mother told me santa always knows where you are. Hopefully he hasnt been paying too much attention to whether Ive been bad or good. I miss all the people from pisco, the sledgehammer and even the wheelbarrows. If you´d like to send something donate some money to Hands On. Because the Lord and Santa know Id just spend it on a bottle of rum and a book.
Feliz Navidad