Learning At the Top of The World

A few years back, like maybe 20 or 30 by now, time going so quickly….I read a book written with humor, a somewhat satirical, memoirish tale about early education.  It might have been inspired by the disappointing reality of college loans, a look at a few wrong turns, or too much time to reflect. The regret of not paying closer attention or applying simple rules of kindness and abundance to a life half lived, might have been the impetus.Maybe the opposite is true, and the book was written as a guide for the rest of us.  The book written by Robert Fulghum, All I Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, became an instant hit.

So I’m thinking recently for reasons I can't exactly recall….clearly little Bobby Fulghum and I didn’t go to the same kindergarten.  Or maybe we did, but I was busy learning other things, not very easily or eagerly.  I learned giggling was not acceptable, or at the very least it had a specific time and place.  I learned if I chortled or chuckled or laughed during those unsanctioned non-giggling times I was sent to a cubby, or some other dark part of a classroom where small children, plant seedlings, and probably even mold are not meant to thrive.  Lifeless corners devoid of oxygen they seemed to be.  I learned the same rules applied to whispering, or using the "wrong" color, or amount of paint.  I learned moving in skips or gallops was frowned upon.  I learned that fitting-in was the goal.  I learned I would be challenged greatly to try to conform in places that did not inspire, encourage and appreciate joy, or curiosity, or me.

I learned how to “air” ice skate in my socks on a linoleum floor as Mrs. Siebold played Winter is Here on a poorly tuned piano at P.S. 11.  I had not learned that my fellow ice skaters had not already been privileged enough to practice real ice skating in Central Park and therefore I appeared to be showing off, which caused me to have to step out of the "air" rink and watch.  I smiled widely just the same, it seemed a beautiful treat to fake ice skate in socks in this place of rules and formalities and structure. I did however, like Mr. Fulghum, learn the value of a snack, and napping.  I didn't need to learn much more about public education, I already knew I was heading to Catholic school, a regular old free wheeling learning vortex!

All I need to know, or maybe a great deal of very meaningful and important things have been learned or validated while hiking. I learned this while hiking alone. It was confirmed hiking with my son, and a friend or two, and field-tested hiking alone several times after.

I started hiking with my youngest son seven years ago. I hiked prior to that, but not Adirondack High Peak hiking. I started that kind of hiking with my youngest son to test my grit and strength after leaving it for years on a kitchen counter with keys and calendars and a deeply rutted routine of carpooling and caterwauling and the cautious contention of cleaning or covering up, and maybe even containing the great want for more.  I learned you can reclaim your strength and grit and spirit much easier and quicker than you are able to give it up year after year.  You simply have to start, step by step, one foot in front of the next, over and over again until you are light on your feet and full in your heart. Easy peasy!

I learned that nature provides a backdrop for kind and gentle reflection, as it provides challenges for forging your way through and past and over some very difficult times.  Hiking provides a landscape to physically permit you to lift yourself higher.  Higher than you were.   Higher than you thought possible.  It provides a trail to allow you to rise above fears and doubts and uncertainty.  And every so often it gives you a view of the so much more, that you wanted and now know is right there surrounding you.

I learned that reaching goals can be hard, tedious work.  That might seem obvious, but I had been in the habit of setting goals that I knew I could reach and just reached them. I learned that I have within me what it takes to get there, most anywhere, without a blazed trail.  I learned after a very long time, goals are reached through negotiation and flexibility, not simply fierce determination and drive.  I learned that hiking does just as much for my mental and emotional fitness as it does for my physical aptness. And as a bonus to some or a freakish oddity to others, I learned my calves are getting solid and strong enough to rival Svetlana Krachevskaya, the 1980 Soviet Union shot put silver medalist.  Most important, for me, I learned balance is the key to happiness only if it is sprinkled with way out thrilling adventures that make you scream WOOHOOO!!!! every now and again.

I learned that no one likes it when someone is breathing down his/her back.  (OK fine, I already knew this.)  We all know this.  But I pushed it further and after giving it thought, I learned there are only two occasions when I truly want to hear someone else’s heavy breathing.  One occasion is when I am holding a small, beautiful infant and she (or he) is in that deep, primitive sleep of the newly born, and she is panting those quick, little deep breaths out of her beautiful formed lips remembering and forgetting her journey here into this new life.  The other occasion when deep breathing on or near my back is welcome would involve Mr. Sexy making all sorts of deep, passionate love to me.  Since neither of those scenarios is ever happening mid hike, back the heck off!  And if I’m the one breathing heavily to haul ass upward, let me teach you something...move ahead and let me at least attempt to have some amount of integrity and decorum, or let me feel the hot shame of my red-faced, tight-lunged, short-breathed forward motion alone.  I’ll meet you at the top, damn it! I always do!

While hiking I have learned that being prepared is not always possible, and sometimes it can be a hindrance.  When I first started hiking, I read several books about hiking this particular range in New York.  In between I went to the Grand Canyon, The Great Tetons, The Great Smoky Mountains and a few hills and bumps along the way.  Hiking books are written by glory seekers.  They are written to make it seem that hiking is a sport for heroes and daredevils and Olympic trained, NASA scientists with a bent for survivalist action or pitching for a reality tv series. Naked and Afraid is well worth a peek.  They’re naked, I’m very afraid.  The authors of hiking books want you to believe they have accomplished great feats, and certainly they have, but you can too.   So anyway, back to the start and the reading of these books….I read that temperatures can fall suddenly or be 30-40 degrees lower at the peak.  Remember, I started this with my son, seven years ago, before survivalist tv shows were the norm and non-wicking, tencel adorned UnderArmor was readily available.  Being prepared for 40 degree weather when hiking on an 80 degree summer day meant hauling a 70 pound pack with a DEC required bear canister, the hiking book, the folding shovel, the compass, and altimeter, the maps, enough water and food to survive the apocalypse, survival tools, fire starter, summer clothes, winter clothes, cameras, sleeping pad, sleeping bag, tent and cook stove.  Oh, the first aid kit equipped to set up an outback infirmary…and well, you get the point.  The pack almost killed me and the look of terror in my son’s eyes as he attempted to pull me up a vertical slide will haunt me through eternity.  Books are meant to be read, experience is meant to give the books personal meaning.  I now know I don’t need to carry 2 gallons of water, a filter, and germicidal iodine pills on a 3 hour hike, even if the signs posted all around the Grand Canyon say otherwise.  I am not hiking under the noon time sun in the Grand Canyon.  Not this week anyway. 

On my last hike with my favorite hiking friend, after huffing and puffing and nearly breathing up his back, we reached the top, that place that levels our playing field, and the sky is over cast and the view is slightly hidden.  We rest and smile widely because we made it.  We feel blessed.  Slightly closer to heaven it seems.  Our earth bound bodies taking us so far.  As the clouds move swiftly, jostling each other around trying to get ahead or over, there is a brief clearing.  He says, profoundly, “If you wait long enough everything gets clearer.”  I have been learning this and living it a great deal lately.  Things are getting clearer, lighter, easier.  I’m getting stronger, more confident, open to challenges and prepared for the unpredictable.  And well, you never know, when Mr. Sexy shows up he might enjoy a good wrestle, or a Soviet style thick-calved scissor hold.   I’ll be prepared. The view from the top surrounds me with so much possibility really.   

I recently giggled at the insanity of approaching one of the “most epic grand slides of the Adirondacks”.  Most every high peak is billed as the most dangerous climb of the 46, depending on which hiking book you read.  I giggled more realizing just how epic I felt doing this….maybe I should write a hiking book about the dangers of giggling and smiling widely so very close to the top of the world…I’m learning to appreciate my view of so much and then some. 

Like minded learners:

"Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.” 
― Ed Viesturs

“At which point, at long last, there was the actual doing it, quickly followed by the grim realization of what it meant to do it, followed by the decision to quit doing it because doing it was absurd and pointless and ridiculously difficult and far more than I expected doing it would be and I was profoundly unprepared to do it.” 
― Cheryl Strayed

“Hiking’s not for everyone. Notice the wilderness is mostly empty.” 
― Sonja Yoerg

“what it is...is a place where I can return to myself. It's enough of a scramble to get to...that the energy expended is significant, and it translates into a change in my body chemistry and my psychological chemistry and my heart chemistry...” 
― Jay Salter

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity” 
― John Muir

“After more than two thousand miles on the [Appalachian] trail, you can expect to undergo some personality changes. A heightened affinity for nature infiltrates your life. Greater inner peace. Enhanced self-esteem. A quiet confidence that if I could do that, I can do and should do whatever I really want to do. More appreciation for what you have and less desire to acquire what you don’t. A childlike zest for living life to the fullest. A refusal to be embarrassed about having fun. A renewed faith in the essential goodness of humankind. And a determination to repay others for the many kindnesses you have received.” 
― Larry Luxenberg

I'm Proud to be......A Donut Licking American

I’ve been quietly sorting through a few of life’s big honking derailments over the past year, after struggling through a few years of rebuilding from scratch a safe and thriving home base.  It had felt a tad hypocritical to write under the heading Woman in Control.  I thought of putting in a disclaimer in the fine print….Woman in Control of attempting to avoid a nervous breakdown, Woman in Control of this tiny little moment and nothing else…..Woman in Control of the few random items that fit in her backpack and lacking the control needed to leave the books, extra shoes, sketch supplies and second camera at home when hiking. ... I chose that Blog Title when everything in my somewhat safe, suburban, wifely existence was intact so to speak.  Just before it fell from underneath me spinning all else out of control.  I felt  at that time I needed to quickly gain control and ensure to the best of my ability, that life went on as intact as was possible for my children.  I did the best I could, it was not always great or without problems, but it was the best I could do in the face of some pretty heady challenges.  We survived.  And I am able to say we are all thriving now.   Living the dream in a manner of speaking.  My manner anyway, with humor and gratitude and good friends to share the joy and pain with. 

So I’m ready to throw my two cents back into the cyber sphere and I figured I would start with a big and serious problem.  America.  Americans.  A few, anyway.  I’ll start with one.  And just for kicks I’ll expand on my thoughts and include a few American’s.  It’s summer, you might want to pour yourself a pretty drink and put your feet up. Because you can.  Because most of you, my reading audience, are American and Americans like all that summer fun, kicking back light and easy party cocktail kinda thing.  I know I do. 

Donuts seem to be this summer’s big news.  Are they American? If not, we certainly have Americanized them.  With a Dunkin Donut or Krispy Kreme, Tim Horton’s, Honey Do, Daylight….or even Wolfee’s doughnut shop within 500 calories of most every American at any time, why wouldn’t we want to spend a great deal of time talking about donuts?   And while we’re at it, lets make a certain little donut licker a household name.  And since we like to pontificate and point fingers and prosecute….let’s also bring up the possibility of criminal charges?  What the hey, there’s not much else in the news.  Why discuss the growing number of Republican candidate’s in the presidential ring?  Looking at a few of them, it’s hard not to imagine there are a few wave-flagging donut-eating Republican’s  amongst them.  Why talk about Iran and all the news related to the new Nuclear agreement?  Why ruin a perfectly good summer after all?

Are there laws on the great American justice books that deal with donuts?  I would look it up but, I don’t really care.

So let me jump right in now......

Apparently, or maybe only if you watch the latest news breaking video in slow motion and have great lip reading skills, ok, maybe they just have to be mediocre, I personally have very weak lip reading skills beyond NO, or Shhh, or I love you.  I needed the captions and voice overs to discover that Ariana Grande, the American I promised to discuss, wanted a donut, and when she didn’t get one, after patiently waiting…ok I’m not that patient either, so to me it seemed a reasonable time, and after waiting that time she muttered or said under her breath, or maybe without breathing at all, something like Americans are dumb, or I hate America, or whatever….who cares?  It might seem I do, since I’m writing about it.  But honest to Dunkin…haven’t we all at one time or another felt like service was especially slow?  And as American’s haven’t we all been lead to believe it is our God given right to demand service NOW!?  What could be more patriotic these days, years, last several decades then getting on our high horses and belittling those in the service industry?  The very industry all those great Republicans have been promoting at the expense of keeping a manufacturing or product based industry on our proud shores? The industry that almost guarantees low wages and poor working conditions, to ensure one in a million American’s continues to live the American dream by becoming something from nothing, like for instance….Ariana Grande?  Maybe she started as something and is now something else…I don’t know much about her, and I don't care that much about her beginnings humble or otherwise.

The reason this story appealed to me is the gloriously flag waving American feel to it all.  Damn! Are we the luckiest people on this whole donut licking planet or what?  For one thing we do summer like no one else around, or across the globe at least.  We let our children out of school and put our brains on hold for a couple of months every year.  We fill our days with inane summer reading material, watching reality stretching summer block busters, drinking summer brews, and enjoying our summer vacations because we don't have a care in the world when summer comes along.  I had an Adirondack Tangerine Dream just last night.  It tasted like Pledge, so being American, I ordered up a different one.  Because I could.  Because I live in America and I am an American. 

Stop here a minute, please, because quite honestly, I can’t imagine donuts have ever been included on  the summery recipe pages of any summer magazine or been featured at a summer barbecue and here we are talking about donuts like never before. It’s amazing isn’t it?  Anything can happen in America!  If I had to guess, Ms. Grande might be enjoying royalties from the Donut Makers of America Coalition, or do they have a Super Pac?  I think the great All-American Kale marketing team from last summer might have been tapped by the donut growers, oh I mean donut fryers of America. 

OK seriously, if anyone can really take any of this seriously….    AMERICA!!! WAKE UP!!! Ariana Grande is a pop singer.  A sweet little thing.  She’s 22 years old. Cut her some lip sugary slack.  To some of you out there, you are already saying "22 my ass!" Or something like that…you are thinking when you were 22 you were married, and paying bills, and had enough sense not to be licking donuts in a slow paced donut shop… lighten up.  We have discovered news breaking science in the past few years…turns out a 22 year old’s brain hasn’t fully developed yet, they are being controlled by practically cortex free floating jelly fish at this point, which explains your marriage at 22, or at least maybe mine.  I might have been better off licking donuts and muttering ethnic slurs about my own ethnic group at 22, who knows?

But back it up a little.  Remember she’s a pop singer, and she writes or at least sings lyrics that seem to scream of some serious donut love.  Listen: I guess time’s wasting. Tick tocking lip locking How can we keep the feelings fresh? How do we zip lock it.  You don’t need to play this song backwards to see she wants her GD donut NOW.  Quick, or get a plastic baggy to keep it fresh before she doesn’t just lick it, but she really goes to town on that donut.  The morning news shows might be clever to get a few of their staff psychologists to crack this case or add more mileage to it. 

We aren’t talking about a young woman from a country with conditions that force her to experience great adversity every day.  Think seriously about this for a minute, would Malala Yousafzai have changed the world if one of her big struggles in life was getting a donut in a timely manner?  I really feel confident saying, “Nope! A big old hell no to that!”

Now lets add insult to injury…..FOX news.  Now REALLY people….. AMERICA!!! like I said….WAKE UP! These folks don’t know a donut from a donut hole, a Latina from an I-talian, an American from an American.  They do know news about hate mongering gets an angry mob growing, In some circles it's become a sad and pathetic American past time.  It brings patriotic America lovers out in droves, as long as you are that one particular kind of patriotic American that can’t figure stuff out on your own so you jump on the FOX bandwagon eating your red, white and blue sprinkled donuts wanting to send Ariana back to her own country even though she's from this country.

I watched this story unfold, in the light and breezy moments of an early summer afternoon, because, well, it’s summer and it seemed a little bit like some cotton candy colored glimpse at ridiculousness.  And don’t we all need that in our lives sometimes?  Frivolous confection? I wondered what the big hullabaloo was all about.  (Isn’t that a fun summery sounding word? Try it out. It’s summer after all...go hog wild and live a little!)  I watched and this is what I thought, it was pure sweet confection with a puppy love twist.  Her boyfriend was egging her on, as she was waiting for a donut. She barely touches the donut with the tip of her tongue.  Doofy, silly, summery mischief at the donut shop.  OK maybe hating on Americans wasn’t necessary…but haven’t we all said goofy things that in the wrong eyes might seem all sorts of awful when in fact they weren’t really words to be hung up on? Or hanged for?  I don’t know…we could all use to lighten up and lick a donut because we are in love or having fun or making a not so great situation a little better from time to time.

I don’t know about the rest of you, or the strongly influenced angered Americans that were hot and bothered by this latest celebrity scandal but my mind is eased at knowing Ariana won’t be spending time in court or in the county jail because criminal charges have not been filed.   I’m kinda thinking MR. Wolfee had to step up his staff to attend to all the donut purchasing that happened after Ariana kissed a donut and she liked it…Oh, WOOPS! that’s a different FOX offending pop singer….

It’s bathing suit season, I fully understand why she simply touched that donut with her tongue…frosting settles on the thighs faster than a news breaking scandal hits the airwaves.  A little carb control goes a long way for this woman.  French crullers….now those are feather light summer treats….but wait….do I need to call them Freedom Crullers to support the cause?

*****UPDATE*****WOLFEE IS PRESSING  CHARGES...STAY TUNED****** Or enjoy summer and tune out.