Joan Wilder's Open Salon Blog

Buried Alive!

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 07:02:30 -0500

We are buried alive!

In less than eighteen hours over thirty inches of heavy snow have fallen onto Crested Butte from a very pregnant sky. When I opened the second story deck door this morning the snow lunged at my legs hugging them up to my knees. It pressed against me like it wanted to come into the house. In fact, it's pressing against all of our first story windows like a hungry mob. It feels predatory and creepy, like "The Blob" or The Fog" or "The Swarm" -- horror flick kind of stuff.

More snow is being delivered all day and into the night.

With so much snow there's no definition on our street -- can't tell our driveway or our road from the half story high mounds of previously plowed snow. Everything blends together -- the trees, cars, houses -- all fat and fluffy in the flat light. It's so flat if you try to step out into it you don't know how to brace yourself for how deep down you're going to sink.

And it's blinding -- so blinding you need to wear sunglasses just to eke out some faint, weak distinction of depth and distance.

Our jagged mountains are filled in like they were injected with Botox. Their rugged crags, their contrast and definition, are full and fat and flat and, camouflaged, blend in with the constant, dizzying swirl of fat flakes falling and falling and falling, softly, silently, falling.

The fences have disappeared.

The only sign of life on this eerie still morning was a puff of snow that came out from somewhere down the street. Then came another puff and another -- a locomotive coughing to life somewhere under all this stuff.

A red jacket emerged through the veil of white. It was some guy trying to dig his car out. At least I think it was a car he was working on. Might have been his house. In about twenty minutes I'll be like that guy huffing and puffing and spouting all that snow up into the air, making like a whale clearing its blowhole.

I don't feel like putting on my layers and Sorrels and raking the roof with an unwieldy fourteen-foot shovel to trigger avalanches of snow onto the decks already groaning with the weight of it, digging into the decks and carving walkways out of the house and exhuming our car.

And the snow is just wet enough that shoveling it, one small scoop at a time, is like sliding a spoonful of ice cream into your mouth, smoothing some off with your lips and the rest, impolitely, staying on the spoon. The snow, when it's lost its airness, clings to the shovel like ice cream. It's double-dipper work.

What a drag when you're surveying this deep white sea and knowing you have to go out there and put your back into it hard to begin to part it only to watch it cave back into itself like a sand castle melting back into a wet beach after a wave.

Even though we get our driveway plowed by some guy puffing weed who comes as reliably as some guy puffing weed and on a Powdah Day, the rest is hand dug. And guess who gets to it do all by herself and not getting any younger after eighteen winters?

Anyway, I need a young guy to come over and shovel all this stuff. The only problem is it's a Powdah Day! All the residents who haven't had seven knee operations (like me) or are already on crutches or in arm slings, drop everything -- jobs, shoveling, even a wife in labor. I mean every blessed thing to wade through buried streets and over buried cars with sticks and poles on their backs to the buses that take you up to the ski area if they've got any drivers still running them 'cause it's a Powdah Day!

They trudge en masse as if to Mecca a couple miles up to The Mountain, just to press in lines against the ropes hours before the lifts open to the North Face in order to be the first to surf the vast virginal deeps of the extremes all day.

On a Powdah Day there is no tomorrow. We ski with impunity.

We used to have a Swiss snow blower with a husky-varney-something name. We lent it to my husband's son several years ago and never got it back. He lost it somehow. It disappeared into that black hole -- that nameless place where things go and never return like half a pair of socks in the dryer. Yes, big things -- like snow blowers, snowmobiles, trucks, even people, disappear here in the mountains like little things do in the dryer.

I know I have to get out there and do the digging while the snow's still light with some air in it. And add my puffs to the other puffs of snow blooming all over the neighborhood now. Like steam rising in clouds above sewer covers in the city on a frigid day. And do it quickly. The moment the temperature goes up the airy snow will go flat as a tire and condense into cement snow, which is ten times harder to heft and heave.

But I don't wanna. I want to dive down under my deep down blanket and dream of warm sand and beaches and of all the sand castles I won't bother building.

* * *

Just got back from being out there. I'm sweaty and heavy with sodden layers and icicles hanging from my hair.

The first thing I did when stepping off our front porch to make a path to the car was do a face plant into four-foot deep snow. Every time I struggled to get up my arms and legs plunged down into the white nothingness. It was as futile as struggling in quicksand. The harder I tried to get up the deeper down I went.

When, somehow, I managed to dog paddle horizontally onto my feet -- feet stuck deep in the snow like fence posts -- I got my bearings and, squinting, saw the town plow had plowed a six-foot berm into our driveway and over the back of our submerged car.

After ten minutes of digging my way eight feet out to the car, I grabbed the door handle, which thankfully was above the snow line, only to find it frozen shut. After finally coaxing it open I still couldn't get into the car to warm it up and get out the snow scraper because the door was blocked by snow -- snow already heavy as wet sand. Only yards from the front porch and I was whipped.

Needless to say, I shoveled and raked and swept and dug that car out just in time to slam it into low gear and back it over a two foot berm and out of the driveway for the snow plow guy, who arrived at that very moment, to dig out our driveway. And I tunneled paths and shoveled the deck and tried, without success, to rake the snow off the roof while the plow guy was here. So the mess it would cause could be plowed by him before he finished. Not much came down. It was iced onto the roof and wouldn't budge.

I was done in. I shook myself off outside the house before kicking off my boots and shedding frozen snow pants, jacket, gloves and hat onto the mud room floor -- where they landed standing up. And I wheezed myself, legs trembling from the effort, upstairs to sink once again -- not into the snow this time but into the white warm down of my bed before I relax in our steam shower.

Oh dang!

You know when you try to get your dog to shake off the snow or rain or mud or whatever outside before she comes into the house and she simply won't? Like mine? And the minute she's inside she shakes the stuff off her like those hairy spinning rollers in a car wash and it sprays all over the place in one big huge hairy sneeze.

Like our dog, the house just shuddered and shook off huge masses of roof ice and hard snow onto the pristine driveway and thundered down its valleys burying, once again, our deck and walkways with giant chunks of crud.

Well, all's I can say is to hell with it. I'm headed for Mecca.

I'm Having A Dr. Seuss Christmas

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:12:07 -0500

I think we're in for a Dr. Seuss Christmas.

We've been dumped on again. Another three feet of dry cornstarch snow and more coming over the weekend. We're still shoveling the decks and walkways and raking the roof to ward off ice dams in its valleys.

This latest blizzard made us thirsty for things like hot chocolate, "The Nutcracker" ballet, "It's A Wonderful Life," listening to christmas carols, hanging stockings with care, and putting up a Christmas tree. Like the Who's of Who-ville, we like Christmas a lot.

As the snow swirled around our house, my daughter Maguy and her friend Dennis went out into the blizzard and got our christmas tree -- the kind that's the last tree standing in an empty lot surrounded by tracks of pine needles left behind by all the popular trees who found a home.

It's the kind of tree I pass up not giving it a second thought because it's twisted. Badly twisted. It has a straight trunk and then, halfway up, makes a big zig with no zag so that the angel on top looks like it's a few yards east or west from the base. If the trunk could be straightened out it would go from its current six feet tall to at least nine or ten. I swear.

Like one of the many orphans we've had at our table during the holidays -- kids who come here to work and ski on the mountain and have families far far from here -- we took it in and adopted it wholeheartedly. (It has nothing to do with the fact it was the last tree in the only lot in Crested Butte.)

I call it a Dr. Seuss tree -- the kind you would expect to find in Who-ville. The kind of tree the Grinch would steal from little Cindy-Lou Who and hold captive in his lair high up the mountain above the town.

He'd break the branches and decorate it with worms, not tinsel, garlic for bulbs, toe corns instead of pop, wrapped with a cord of sullen, dark lights 'cause one little light is missing, carelessly slung empty, smelly, rusty tin cans for ornaments, a fallen angel hanging precariously at the top, and presents under the tree made of chunks of sooty coal wrapped in old, yellowed newspapers.

Anyway, we wrestled with that orphan tree for hours. I swear it had a life of its own and enjoyed the game.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

First, Maguy got it into our home by dragging it through the downstairs and up our zig zag staircase and across one of our Persian rugs into a corner of the living room spreading not joy but pine needles, sap and snow along her way. We had to get it onto the terra cotta floor tiles to let the snow on it melt off and roll up corners of large, heavy rugs so they wouldn't get wet and rot.

Once it was dry, we tried tilting the trunk to make the top appear above the base rather than way off course, and finally, after calculating its latitude and longitude, figured out the trunk part had to go in straight no matter what. And the darn thing kept falling over anyway time after time after time.

We kept screwing into the trunk and unscrewing out eight 6-inch long screws while lying under the tree battling sap droppings and getting pine needles and pinecone dust in our eyes -- well, at least I did.

I always dive head first into a project and think I can fix it. Not this one!

All sweaty and dreadlocked with sappy, needley, disintegrating rug pad rust dust, we got it placed. And when we stood back to admire our efforts discovered it was full of large holes -- the kind a Grinch would punch into it for fun. They looked painful like cavities.

So I had an ingenious idea. A Christmas first. I tied the branches close together with turkey trussing string to close the gaps and stuffed the tree, like a turkey, with fake pine branches I decorate the banister with, and filled in that doggone Green Eggs And Ham tree and made it almost handsome. We filled the stand with water to appease its thirst.

Satisfied and pooped, we went to different rooms to scrub off the sap, brush off the needles, and take a nap. We would decorate it later.

I was just exhaling on my bed when I heard a loud whoosh - like the snow shedding off the roof. I ran into the living room and there was The Tree -- splayed out across the living room playing dead with water seeping out from under it, like blood, into the Persian rug that runs the length and breadth of our living room. The rug that can't be picked up and aired out.

Suffice it to say I cleaned up what I could, shoved a resisting couch out of the way to roll back the ungainly rug as far as I could manage to dry it out and tried to right this wrong tree and couldn't and then leaned it against the wall. The zig in its trunk faced so far forward it kept falling over anyway like a drunk.

I finally wrestled it into a position I thought trustworthy and turned my back on it and quickly spun around to catch it in the act. It stared back at me perfectly and annoyingly still. I could have sworn it smirked at me.

With a great exhale, I called on the troops and once again we all struggled to stabilize it in our tree stand and failed.

Finally a tiny light bulb went off in my head like a teeny christmas tree light. The base of the tree was not hitting the bottom of our tree stand. Instead it was floating on four thick, low branches, teetering this way and that to keep its balance like a high wire act. H-E-L-L-O.

We needed a saw so Maguy volunteered to make the arduous journey out to the garage to get a hold of one -- a long round trip wading through snow above her knees. She came back upstairs with it, legs covered in snow like fleece and sporting great red splotched cheeks from the cold.

Dennis grabbed that dull, rusty saw with a bloodthirst and gnawed his way through the four stubborn branches, adding sawdust to the pad dust, needles and slush. And sap. Oh bubble bubble, toil and trouble.

And then! The Miracle on Elk Avenue! The damn Cat In The Hat tree's trunk actually settled all the way down into the bottom of the stand! And after doing the annual tilting the tree this way and that according to Maguy's instructions from ten feet away and a face-plant-to-the- floor half hour screw job under the tree , the Who-Villian tree stood firmly and solidly in place, albeit still twisted like the hunchback atop Notre Dame.

We replaced the fake pine hole fillers with the fresh sawed off branches which was brilliant because after we finally put the all lights and ornaments on the dead branches they will probably turn grey tomorrow and drop off and we won't be able to fix it because of all the stuff we swaddled the tree in like a straightjacket.

We still haven't decorated it yet. We're afraid to. Now every time I go into the living room I sneak in on tiptoes expecting to catch it doing something. I trust that tree as far as I can throw it.

Truly this tree would make even a Grinch smile. For after all, like the Grinch says, "maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas ... perhaps ... means a little bit more."

White Noise

Tue, 1 Dec 2009 23:12:39 -0500

Tonight, in a split second, our whole town disappeared into the cavernous dark depths of the West Elk Wilderness. The power went out and our old mining town sat there like a clump of coal.

There was a fat full moon hanging just above the crest of Crested Butte. The snow was all lit up by it -- fluorescent like black light. The houses all decorated with care for the holidays were sad, dark, shapeless lumps barely standing out in relief against the white, bright, light of moon snow.

We opened our curtains to borrow light from the moon and reflected snow.

I have hurricane lamps at the ready from the days when we lived in an old stone castle on San Francisco Bay where storms would sweep through the golden gate and blast salt water at our fortress. The castle could take anything, but the wind would blow the electricity out -- like a candle.

So I found my one flashlight no one's put somewhere else and lit the lanterns. The light was yellow and muted. Like how it must have been in the mining days.

We looked out at the other homes in our neighborhood and they were still, dark.

Then there was a flicker behind one yellowed shade. Then another. It was the English teacher's house and the windows flickered and danced like the flame in a pumpkin.

Catching on quickly, my daughter and I picked up our hurricane lamps and wove in and out from room to room and up and down the stairs to make our house into a Jack-O-Lantern for the neighbors. It was like being on stage.

Then our mood turned toward cuddling up and telling ghost stories by candle light and the smell of melting wax.

At that moment I started to fear our pipes would freeze tonight if the power didn't go back on. Tonight it's supposed to be a high of ten to fifteen below up here. It's like the fear you have during an earthquake wondering if it's going to last more than 30 seconds. Like if you hold your breath, the shaking will stop or the power will go back on.

We just settled down to enjoy the futility of worrying when presto change-o! All the lights and the furnace roared into action and the town began to hum again.

Then all the white of the full moon snow became white noise.

Mud Season

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:11:01 -0500

Today is a rare day. I'm getting out of the house and into my car and out the driveway --away for a couple of hours for the first time in months. Alone. Just me. Today I am going to practice the art of listening.

The car I'm getting into is parked in front of my home -- a wood house on a dead end street, facing up snow walled Paradise Divide deep in the upper Gothic reaches of the towering Colorado Rockies.

I am one of the few lucky souls to have made my home log by log in an historic former mining village called Crested Butte, Colorado. My husband and I and our two girls settled here eighteen years ago, like pioneers, after some pretty easy living on San Francisco Bay and Carmel by the Sea.

Crested Butte is breathtaking at 9,000 feet way above and beyond sea level anywhere.

The altitude is not the only thing about it that takes your breath away.

The town sits high in a valley that dead ends at the foot of the mountain it is named after and is surrounded by dozens more -- lots of thirteen hundreds with sharp, hard, stony peaks rising above the tree line. When I look up at them they look like grey bearded stern faced gods in white robes watching our every move.

Crested Butte is the wildflower capital of Colorado, an extreme skiing and mountain biking Mecca, it's is hikers' heroine, and does NOT have all the stuff cities have which is its jewel in the crown.

It's a place that boasts our men are men and the women are too. The winters here are severe and long. They keep our permanent population at about 1,000 tough, lucky souls. The dog population is three times that.

Like it's former mining inhabitants, our first home was a small vintage wooden dwelling heated by a wood burning stove. With seven months of winter and lots of 40 below days, I learned quickly how to chop chords of wood and turn logs into kindling without losing my thumb. (There's a rule of thumb here about where to place your thumb when hacking logs into kindling with a heavy axe. It wasn't until I nearly lost mine that I learned about the rule of thumb -- told to me by an exasperated old timer who knew we would be run out of town carried downstream by surfing the waves of snow melting on their return to the sea.)

We used to get so much snow in the winter we had to board up our first story windows to keep them from caving in. Our girls could step out onto the back yard from a door on the second story -- no balcony or deck. Just a door the miners put on the second stories of their homes to step outside onto the backyards from there because the lower doors were buried in the winter.

Like voles we had to shovel and maintain snow tunnels to walk through from the street side to the front door. Same way to get out the back doors to our wood pile to chop wood and kindling all winter to feed and feed and feed our big black bellied insatiable wood burning stove in hopes our home would hold the heat through the night -- keep us 20 degrees above on 40 belows.

One hard winter when all the homes were buried, I looked down at our town from a ski lift and only the tops of the homes made it above the snow line -- tilting out of it like tombstones.

We have four seasons here -- seven months of winter, about six weeks of summer, a few weeks of gold plated autumn, and the rest of it is called "mud season."

It's mud season here right now. That's when people without kids in school head south or to any place that's warm and has an ocean. And return home when the ski resort opens for the winter.

For those of us who stay, it's a time when we make our annual pilgrimage to our doctors to get any kind of checkups and the usual joint surgeries in time to ski hard for another winter.

Our main street is dusty and quiet. We have no mailboxes on our homes and there are no lines at the Post Office. People walk the streets and the sidewalks are bare. The tiny grocery store has upped its prices and lowered its stock and the fresh produce is rotten.

The valley is brown, the naked aspens are grey, pine trees are green and blue. Our boots are caked with brown mud. The streets are streaked with dried brown tire marks. The cattle being rounded up from wandering in the mountains to be transported south for the winter sport hides dusted a crusty brown.

This is what it looked like when I left town to drive down 2,200 feet to Gunnison 30 miles away to see my doctor. It was a grey, chilly day -- about 32 degrees. Around here, anything above 20 degrees is merely a chilly day.

I was alone and heading down the valley. I had read a meditation this morning about listening. It stuck to me. I wanted to think about listening today. How would it show up? What would it look like? What would happen if I did? Or didn't? I was so inspired and galvanized by it, I decided I would focus on and practice being a better listener for the day. I know my husband would have appreciated that big time.

So I brought along one of my inspirational CD's to listen to on the sixty mile round trip. The person speaking on it was a man named Bob. Just Bob and Me. I was Free!!!

I breathed in with lust and exhaled stingily and turned on Bob with the mouthwatering expectation of biting into a chocolate truffle. And shushed my monkey mind to focus on him and listen with purpose and intent.

Only a few minutes into my drive Bob was blathering away when I noticed a bunch of brown leathered cowboys astride brown horses kicking up dirt in a hay colored meadow, whistling at their cow dogs rounding up, yes, brown cattle -- all huffing and puffing grey vaporous clouds from their nostrils. Like they were all pulling on cigars.

I got all stirred up at the thought I might end up in a cattle drive on the highway. I love being in the middle of them. The cars have nowhere to go. You just get in line behind the swinging hips and tails of the herd in front of you or sit there and let them stare at you when you're going against traffic. There was a cattle drive, but I missed it! The evidence was all over our small two-lane highway.

Okay, Joan, Back to Bob. Remember, we're listening now. We're listening.

I turned again to Bob and noticed the open spaces, the brown hills and mountains peaks digging into the granite sky vying for space, the traces of snow left in dark shadows and avalanche paths from the last snow storm that melted off. And I realized again I was not listening to Bob and tried very hard to listen to him.

For ten more minutes I kept trying to listen to him and my mind meandered. Poor Bob. He started to sound like noise to me -- like the incessant, insipid chatter of a TV show in another room. (We don't have TV but that's what it sounds like when I'm exposed to it.)

I was failing my listening class.

Then a small inner voice managed to break through the yakking and nudged me to simply turn him off and drive in silence. What? Listen to silence? I finally paid attention to that nagging voice and turned off Bob.

I was just approaching the curve where bald eagles make their nests every winter in the trees along the river. The river too exhales clouds upward into a river of mist. I thought it was too early in the season for them to arrive but looked at the black barren trees to see if I could find the first one of the season. In our family we vie to be the first to spot one.

And there it was! One fat, tall, proud bald eagle -- all black bodied and white headed -- perched on the end of a thick naked branch. I slowed to a crawl. There was nobody else on the road. He looked like he was standing at attention -- like he just started the day watch. He reminded me of a penguin -- wings behind his back caught up in serious thought, so still and dignified, like a butler. He was stunning, bold, with a bald head chock full of shocking white feathers.

Seeing no other eagles and no sign of nests, I wondered if he was sent ahead of the others like a scout for his tribe. Sent ahead to see if the coast was clear for the annual migration to the trees along the river.

For just an instant we were both alone and gazed at each other. I wondered what he thought of me in my machine. What kind of animal I was -- predator or prey.

What a moment. Frozen in time where time has no meaning. I was so caught up in my pilgrimage to listen that I almost missed it.

It turned out I needed to listen to silence. And I got to hear the quiet voice deep inside that taps me on the shoulder and whispers surprises to me.

CLIT NOTES

Thu, 5 Nov 2009 12:11:09 -0500

What's up with all this fuss over the clit as in, "How do you pronounce it," among other things?

I'm okay with tomato tomahto, potato, potatoh. But because no one knows how to say clitoris we've cut it back to clit. Like it's the only safe way to say it.

Every doctor and ob-gyn I've been to, I have asked the same question, "How do you pronounce clitoris?" And they break their composure with a brief look of shock and then recover and casually shrug their shoulders and tell me you can say it either way -- as in KLIT erus or Kli TOR us. I've found a third one which is even worse klitres -- so small and embarrassing -- like something you hide in the closet and are ashamed you have in the house.

Remember that meek, repressed secretary of the big bad boss in "Stuart Saves His Family?" Julia Sweeny played it to perfection. Most women I've heard even utter the formal version out loud sorta say it like her. Like when she hunches down behind her desk and squeaks, "May I help you?" We sort of cringe and squeak "my klitres?"

I have actually caught myself using that small high squeaky voice when I've asked my doctor the question -- and she's a female too! And even she gave this eery disinterested, noncommittal "either way is fine," reply.

I mean we seem to treat it like it's a pimple on your nose or something. Because no one can decide how to say it, we've reduced it now from klitres to a mere "clit." Like, now where did I leave my clit? Have you seem my clit? It's always tucked away somewhere. You won't find me saying, "Oops, sorry. I just tripped over my clit." It's a shortened version -- like if you didn't read Moby Dick you can just pick up your Clit Notes and cheat.

Well, I'll tell ya. After all my queries and looking clitoris up in multiple dictionaries, encyclopedia and etymologies, I've made a decision. I am taking a strong stand on this one. I'm giving it the big bold pronounciation of cliTORus! Yes! I have a cli-TOR-AHHH-SSS and I'm proud of it.

Even though it's small and hidden, it's one powerful organ. Guy's are so proud of their Mr. Happy's and boners and salamis -- their PENISES (emphasis on every syllable).

Well I've got a Mrs. Happy who gets boners and hard ons and comes with its own lubricant to boot. And the great thing about it is it's very powerful but keeps its secrets. It doesn't stick out and rub against you during a teen prom and embarrass the heck out of you. When I'm singing around the house or rapping in front of my mirror (please don't tell, no one knows I do this) I don't grab it and squeeze it for shock value.

I mean, have you ever seen a female flasher?

Discovering my cliTORis was a disaster.

When I was a kid, I used to shimmy up the poles holding up our swing set. When I got to the top something amazing, mesmerizing, completely implosive would happen and I would lose all my strength and fall off in happy, confused, exhaustion.

Whenever my mom caught me, she was disgusted. She looked at me like I was the pox. I got hauled off the swing set and bawled out and told never to do THAT again (I didn't know what THAT was) and sent to my room to say an entire Rosary and ask god for forgiveness. For what? All I knew was that whatever "it" was, I knew it had to be a Mortal Sin and I was damned forever.

But I liked whatever THAT was and found myself shimmying up anything I could get my hands on -- from stair railings to doors. And no matter how hard I tried to be stealthy, I would get caught and spanked and looked at like I was the devil and sent to my room. I didn't know then my fingers could do the talking.

I think the worst thing that happened about this mystery thing I loved was in high school. Yes! high school. I was raised Catholic and taught by nuns. Believe me. I was a late bloomer and didn't know what this things was until junior year.

Anyway, we were in gym class and our PE teacher had these thick, giant ropes hanging from the rafters and we all had to wrap our legs around them and shimmy to the top in order to pass PE.

I wanted to die right then and there. I looked at that rope with lust and terror because I knew what would happen at the top and the fall was two stories and all the other girls would find out I'm possessed.

When it was my sorry turn, I got less than halfway up and The Thing happened and I desperately tried to break my fall with my hands and ended up on the floor in my usual post orgasm stupor with horrific rope burns and a face as red as my hands.

I do digress.

In sum, I hope that I have reached out to even just a few women who will now get out from behind their desks and stand up tall, shoulders back, and say it loud and proud, "I'm a good person and people like me and I have a cliTORis." So there!