The Lure of a Mountain
In the darkest months of the year, a woman leaves her children in the care of others and trudges up a mountain. Every week she does this, stopped by neither snow nor sleet nor howling winds. She is joined in her trek by hundreds of other people, some from towns nearby but others from cities a thousand miles distant. Emergency personnel stand by. Support personnel supply food, water, shelter.
In her most ambitious novel to date, Jen Ponderosa examines the impulses within a quiet, suburban mother which lead her to undertake this dangerous pilgrimage.
The Wilderness Within
This is the story of Jen Ponderosa, a housewife and mother of two who lives in a society that values safety and the reduction of risk above all else. Chafing at what they view as the excessive caution in this society, Jen and a band of "adventurers" begin brief but regular forays into the wilderness areas which surround the town. Upon return they bring a smell of freedom which begins to subvert the quiet order of things. In the conflict which follows, Jen must re-examine her notions of acceptable risk.
This is the second in Andrea's Monday Mission series: a blog post written in the style of a book jacket blurb.
The first is a fair description of my Saturday, on which I snowboarded ALL DAY! (Big thanks to my mother-in-law.) The second is just something I thought of while I was writing the first.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Who I am from
Updated 3/1: Forty years! My parents have been married forty years. I know that because I'm 35, and they were married awhile before I came along. (I'm 35? When did that happen?)
I first saw this meme at Charlotte Otter's. I kept thinking about it because 1> the syntax drove me crazy and 2> her childhood was so place-based and mine was not. I couldn't imagine how I might adapt it... But then I came up with this.
I am from a country so big that I grew up near one ocean and am raising my children near another.
I am from possibility. I am from opportunity. From a father, the 2nd oldest of 13 children, who lived (is living) his dream, who retired to accolades, admiration and respect. Who paid for my college education and encouraged me to do whatever I liked. Who encouraged me to want something and then go get it.
I am from a mother raised on a farm, who knows how to be still so that the animals gather around her, who watches birds everywhere she goes, knows their names and their calls. I am from a mother who values small creatures, who values quiet and harmony. I am from a woman who's proud of her work as a wife and mother, who knows that what she does and who she is matters.
I am from freedom of movement. I am from a childhood lived in three states, six towns. I am from an itinerant early adulthood, I am from travel through 13 countries. I am from parents who own two houses, one on each side of the continent, and who now travel abroad three times a year.
I am from physical grace, from a body strenghtened and controlled, in balance. I am from physical ability. I am from parents who climbed a mountain in their 60s. I am from a sister who raced a half-Ironman.
I am from intelligence. I am from competence. I am from responsibility -- for oneself, and to others.
I am from generosity. I am from a woman who cared for her mother for a decade. I am from parents married for35 years. I am from sisters who are married to men they loved in high school.
I am from parents who keep their personal lives obscured from their children. I am from emotional stoicism. I am from silence. Yet I am from laughter.
I am not from a place, but I am from a family.
I first saw this meme at Charlotte Otter's. I kept thinking about it because 1> the syntax drove me crazy and 2> her childhood was so place-based and mine was not. I couldn't imagine how I might adapt it... But then I came up with this.
I am from a country so big that I grew up near one ocean and am raising my children near another.
I am from possibility. I am from opportunity. From a father, the 2nd oldest of 13 children, who lived (is living) his dream, who retired to accolades, admiration and respect. Who paid for my college education and encouraged me to do whatever I liked. Who encouraged me to want something and then go get it.
I am from a mother raised on a farm, who knows how to be still so that the animals gather around her, who watches birds everywhere she goes, knows their names and their calls. I am from a mother who values small creatures, who values quiet and harmony. I am from a woman who's proud of her work as a wife and mother, who knows that what she does and who she is matters.
I am from freedom of movement. I am from a childhood lived in three states, six towns. I am from an itinerant early adulthood, I am from travel through 13 countries. I am from parents who own two houses, one on each side of the continent, and who now travel abroad three times a year.
I am from physical grace, from a body strenghtened and controlled, in balance. I am from physical ability. I am from parents who climbed a mountain in their 60s. I am from a sister who raced a half-Ironman.
I am from intelligence. I am from competence. I am from responsibility -- for oneself, and to others.
I am from generosity. I am from a woman who cared for her mother for a decade. I am from parents married for
I am from parents who keep their personal lives obscured from their children. I am from emotional stoicism. I am from silence. Yet I am from laughter.
I am not from a place, but I am from a family.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Ssnnooooooooooowww!
After weeks and weeks during which I envied all y'all's tales of snowstorms, we are finally having our own. It makes me so happy. A good storm wakes me up.
Thursday snow fell all day, wet but not slushy, with no wind: the kind of snow that clumps on pine branches and changes the color of the world. It was perfect snowman snow. The kids and I spent the morning constructing a veritable giant which -- just like the giant up the beanstalk -- succumbed to the wiles of a small boy. We tried to make an igloo, too, but hadn't enough snow for a roof; we settled for a fort and hid from the neighbors.
Friday the kids had daycare. I stayed in the house with just my job for company and listened to snow fall onto the roof with every squirrel's movements -- ka-pow! -- as startling as an explosion. I heard each car as it passed, crunching snow; I heard my neighbors' footsteps. Thursday during the snowfall everything got quiet but Friday was loud.
My in-laws' Camp Sherman house is like a den, as I said; it protects its inhabitants from the outside. My house is different. Mine is a modern house: it lets the outside in. Thursday the trees drooping with snow seemed to reach inside. Looking up through the skylights I see the sky through tree limbs just as if I were standing on the forest floor. It's not an old-growth forest far from humans; it's more like a campground with neighbors 50 feet away. Hello everyone! Isn't this wonderful?
Thursday snow fell all day, wet but not slushy, with no wind: the kind of snow that clumps on pine branches and changes the color of the world. It was perfect snowman snow. The kids and I spent the morning constructing a veritable giant which -- just like the giant up the beanstalk -- succumbed to the wiles of a small boy. We tried to make an igloo, too, but hadn't enough snow for a roof; we settled for a fort and hid from the neighbors.
Friday the kids had daycare. I stayed in the house with just my job for company and listened to snow fall onto the roof with every squirrel's movements -- ka-pow! -- as startling as an explosion. I heard each car as it passed, crunching snow; I heard my neighbors' footsteps. Thursday during the snowfall everything got quiet but Friday was loud.
My in-laws' Camp Sherman house is like a den, as I said; it protects its inhabitants from the outside. My house is different. Mine is a modern house: it lets the outside in. Thursday the trees drooping with snow seemed to reach inside. Looking up through the skylights I see the sky through tree limbs just as if I were standing on the forest floor. It's not an old-growth forest far from humans; it's more like a campground with neighbors 50 feet away. Hello everyone! Isn't this wonderful?
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
A study of the negotation of parental responsibility on a two-parent family
Updated Mar 12. Better late than never. My post won an award! It's my first award. Thanks Mayberry Mom.
Post begins:
This is a mock journal abstract. It was Andrea's idea. It was really, really fun.
In the middle decades of the 20th century in American society, childrearing roles were clear: in a two-parent household, the woman was the primary caregiver. The man may have been involved in caregiving, but he was not primarily responsible for fulfilling the day-to-day, minute-to-minute demands of small children. Now, however, these roles are in flux. In some households, women are still the primary caregivers, and in some, men are the primary caregivers. In yet others the role can vary by month, by day or by hour, depending on various factors.
We are interested in households in which the role of primary caregiver switches between the two parents over the course of a single day. How do they manage the hand-off? Are the children aware of which parent is on-duty, so to speak?
To address these questions we studied a single household in a small Oregon town on one day. The family includes a father who works outside the home, a mother who works part-time, and two children ages 5 and 2. On the day we visited this family, the children were not in daycare and the mother did no office work. The father left before anyone had woken, returning home at approximately 6:30pm. Both children were in bed at 9pm. Over a period of 2 1/2 hours, then, the parents were both in the house, constantly negotiating who was primarily caregiver.
For most of the evening the atmosphere in the house was not tense. The child* was always within arm's reach of one parent or the other and it did appear clear to both him and the parents that the adult nearby was the one in charge of him. (He did not, for example, misdirect requests for food or water.) For most of this time the hand-off occurred with no visible negotiation. We did not witness any gestures nor hear any statements regarding the swapping of responsibility.
However, there were two notable exceptions:
* At approximately 8:30 pm, the mother said, "You got to take 1/2 an hour in the bathroom. Now it's my turn!" She then retired to the master bedroom, leaving the child with his father.
* At approximately 9pm the father was heard to say, "It's time for bed now, Blake. Mom will help you brush your teeth." As the mother was still in the master bedroom at that time (but clearly was able to hear the statement), we infer that the father was stating his desire to reliquish his role as primary caregiver. This inference was later corroborated in a follow-up interview.
In conclusion, it appears that parents use a sophisticated form of ESP to communicate which of them is primarily responsible for the children. The children are included in this "invisible" communication. That system breaks down as bedtime nears, when parents and children must rely on the spoken word -- usually uttered in a raised voice -- to communicate their roles.
*Design notes: Because the mother was the only adult at home with the children from the moment she woke until the father returned, she assumed the role of primary caregiver for those eleven hours. At the time he returned, the youngest child had fallen asleep on the kitchen floor (a situation we were led to believe is unusual) and was put to bed by the mother. It is therefore possible that our sample size was too small and duration too limited. More study is needed.
Post begins:
This is a mock journal abstract. It was Andrea's idea. It was really, really fun.
In the middle decades of the 20th century in American society, childrearing roles were clear: in a two-parent household, the woman was the primary caregiver. The man may have been involved in caregiving, but he was not primarily responsible for fulfilling the day-to-day, minute-to-minute demands of small children. Now, however, these roles are in flux. In some households, women are still the primary caregivers, and in some, men are the primary caregivers. In yet others the role can vary by month, by day or by hour, depending on various factors.
We are interested in households in which the role of primary caregiver switches between the two parents over the course of a single day. How do they manage the hand-off? Are the children aware of which parent is on-duty, so to speak?
To address these questions we studied a single household in a small Oregon town on one day. The family includes a father who works outside the home, a mother who works part-time, and two children ages 5 and 2. On the day we visited this family, the children were not in daycare and the mother did no office work. The father left before anyone had woken, returning home at approximately 6:30pm. Both children were in bed at 9pm. Over a period of 2 1/2 hours, then, the parents were both in the house, constantly negotiating who was primarily caregiver.
For most of the evening the atmosphere in the house was not tense. The child* was always within arm's reach of one parent or the other and it did appear clear to both him and the parents that the adult nearby was the one in charge of him. (He did not, for example, misdirect requests for food or water.) For most of this time the hand-off occurred with no visible negotiation. We did not witness any gestures nor hear any statements regarding the swapping of responsibility.
However, there were two notable exceptions:
* At approximately 8:30 pm, the mother said, "You got to take 1/2 an hour in the bathroom. Now it's my turn!" She then retired to the master bedroom, leaving the child with his father.
* At approximately 9pm the father was heard to say, "It's time for bed now, Blake. Mom will help you brush your teeth." As the mother was still in the master bedroom at that time (but clearly was able to hear the statement), we infer that the father was stating his desire to reliquish his role as primary caregiver. This inference was later corroborated in a follow-up interview.
In conclusion, it appears that parents use a sophisticated form of ESP to communicate which of them is primarily responsible for the children. The children are included in this "invisible" communication. That system breaks down as bedtime nears, when parents and children must rely on the spoken word -- usually uttered in a raised voice -- to communicate their roles.
*Design notes: Because the mother was the only adult at home with the children from the moment she woke until the father returned, she assumed the role of primary caregiver for those eleven hours. At the time he returned, the youngest child had fallen asleep on the kitchen floor (a situation we were led to believe is unusual) and was put to bed by the mother. It is therefore possible that our sample size was too small and duration too limited. More study is needed.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Ah, this is the life
RSS: small edits at 7:15p. Really, I shouldn't read these after I post!
In winter my in-laws’ house in Camp Sherman is like a den. Snow calves off the roof into piles before the picture windows, foreshortening the view and blocking the light. It’s a wooden house, made not of logs but of rough-hewn lumber, unpainted: so one might also say it’s like the inside of a tree, if the tree had a stone fireplace in its center.
For a day or two in winter, maybe as long as a week, the house feels safe. It is the cozy center of the world. Then it becomes both claustrophobic and lonely, like a cage. The internet says 250 people live in Camp Sherman, but I can’t imagine where they all are. Hidden among the trees, I guess. To borrow Laura Ingalls Wilder’s description of her little house: “The great, dark trees of the Big Woods stood all around the house, and beyond them were other trees and beyond them were more trees. As far as a man could go to the north in a day, or a week, or a whole month, there was nothing but woods.” Woods and mountains.
So my husband and I only visit the Camp Sherman house in winter when we know there’ll be a crowd, a noisy and boistrous group generating its own light. We made an exception this past weekend for some friends of ours – a couple and their 4-year-old son – who requested some time out there. OK, we said; let’s embrace the idea. We’ll ski at Hoodoo! We’ll snowshoe! We’ll sled! Then we’ll come home to soup and a blazing fire!
It was 65 degrees on Saturday.
We adults basked in the sun on the deck, coatless, shoeless, slurping cans of PBR. So content we barely spoke at all. Ah! This is the life! The children did no basking, of course; they ran playing with sticks and rocks and boxes and (yes) plastic dinosaurs. All three ended up in Lake Creek, the boys up to their waists. This distressed the other mother (her son had a cough). Her husband kept exclaiming, “They’re boys!” in a way that suggested the inevitability of their dunking; I think he meant to say that it was fun. The kids certainly enjoyed it – right up to the moment at which they were abruptly, unbearably cold. Then we adults laughed to hear their boots squish as they walked. “Catch any salmon in those boots?”
The kids threw rocks. Sasha chased the geese. Blake lost a shoe to the mud. I built a catapult for them but Blake had recently seen “Pippi Longstocking” and wanted instead an airplane that can be pedalled; he and Talkative Boy devised a plan to fly to Mexico and dive for treasure. We drove to the fish hatchery, nearly losing a car to the mud; then we walked to the Metolius (where I took yesterday's picture). We brought entirely too much food and ate it all.
We woke Sunday morning to snow squalls.
Homeward! Escape homeward!
In winter my in-laws’ house in Camp Sherman is like a den. Snow calves off the roof into piles before the picture windows, foreshortening the view and blocking the light. It’s a wooden house, made not of logs but of rough-hewn lumber, unpainted: so one might also say it’s like the inside of a tree, if the tree had a stone fireplace in its center.
For a day or two in winter, maybe as long as a week, the house feels safe. It is the cozy center of the world. Then it becomes both claustrophobic and lonely, like a cage. The internet says 250 people live in Camp Sherman, but I can’t imagine where they all are. Hidden among the trees, I guess. To borrow Laura Ingalls Wilder’s description of her little house: “The great, dark trees of the Big Woods stood all around the house, and beyond them were other trees and beyond them were more trees. As far as a man could go to the north in a day, or a week, or a whole month, there was nothing but woods.” Woods and mountains.
So my husband and I only visit the Camp Sherman house in winter when we know there’ll be a crowd, a noisy and boistrous group generating its own light. We made an exception this past weekend for some friends of ours – a couple and their 4-year-old son – who requested some time out there. OK, we said; let’s embrace the idea. We’ll ski at Hoodoo! We’ll snowshoe! We’ll sled! Then we’ll come home to soup and a blazing fire!
It was 65 degrees on Saturday.
We adults basked in the sun on the deck, coatless, shoeless, slurping cans of PBR. So content we barely spoke at all. Ah! This is the life! The children did no basking, of course; they ran playing with sticks and rocks and boxes and (yes) plastic dinosaurs. All three ended up in Lake Creek, the boys up to their waists. This distressed the other mother (her son had a cough). Her husband kept exclaiming, “They’re boys!” in a way that suggested the inevitability of their dunking; I think he meant to say that it was fun. The kids certainly enjoyed it – right up to the moment at which they were abruptly, unbearably cold. Then we adults laughed to hear their boots squish as they walked. “Catch any salmon in those boots?”
The kids threw rocks. Sasha chased the geese. Blake lost a shoe to the mud. I built a catapult for them but Blake had recently seen “Pippi Longstocking” and wanted instead an airplane that can be pedalled; he and Talkative Boy devised a plan to fly to Mexico and dive for treasure. We drove to the fish hatchery, nearly losing a car to the mud; then we walked to the Metolius (where I took yesterday's picture). We brought entirely too much food and ate it all.
We woke Sunday morning to snow squalls.
Homeward! Escape homeward!
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Sacrifice
RSS note: I enlarged the photo.
We often say that by living here, we're making a sacrifice. Our friends say this too. We mean financial sacrifice, mostly (Central Oregon pays notoriously low wages), but the complaint also may refer to Bend's cultural or retail offerings.
On the other hand.
Yesterday: Blake clambering over a downed ponderosa near the fish hatchery, Camp Sherman, OR.
We often say that by living here, we're making a sacrifice. Our friends say this too. We mean financial sacrifice, mostly (Central Oregon pays notoriously low wages), but the complaint also may refer to Bend's cultural or retail offerings.
On the other hand.
Yesterday: Blake clambering over a downed ponderosa near the fish hatchery, Camp Sherman, OR.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Friday morning snowboarding
Rewritten 2:44pm
Weather report from Mt. Bachelor at 8am: 32 degrees, raining, moderate to strong winds; more than half of the lifts on stand-by.
Er.
Er.
I still wanted to check it out, but Artist Sister-in-law said it would be a waste of gasoline. So, so. I brought the kids to my neighbor's house anyway and Artist Sister and I walked up Pilot Butte. Wet dirt underfoot, the smell of sage and juniper in the air. Mountains had disappeared into the gray sky. So much of this landscape is just stones and sky.
Hello, we said. Hi, how ya doin', hi, hello: lots of other people chose to walk the butte this morning, too.
Hello, we said. Hi, how ya doin', hi, hello: lots of other people chose to walk the butte this morning, too.
Stones and sky -- and junipers.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Saturday morning snowboarding
Old snow up there: hard, icy, covered in tree debris. Some exposed rocks. Wispy clouds hung on the summit of South Sister in the morning, then traversed the gap to Mt. Bachelor. At first we said, "It's fogging!" because the air seemed to condense onto our goggles. Then it turned to ordinary rain.
Sometimes snowboarding is swooshy and peaceful, but on Saturday it was loud. Board scrrrrratch, scrrratch, scrratching against the ice, and running so fast into the wind -- well, it was like hanging my head outside a car window. And of course every so often I'd shout whee-haa! Partly in fear of falling at speed and partly (simultaneously) for the joy of it.
*
The competition was cool. I watched a little from the Pine Marten chair -- just practice, I think. Those kids fly!
Sometimes snowboarding is swooshy and peaceful, but on Saturday it was loud. Board scrrrrratch, scrrratch, scrratching against the ice, and running so fast into the wind -- well, it was like hanging my head outside a car window. And of course every so often I'd shout whee-haa! Partly in fear of falling at speed and partly (simultaneously) for the joy of it.
*
The competition was cool. I watched a little from the Pine Marten chair -- just practice, I think. Those kids fly!
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