Monday morning: Off to work. The harder chores- like trailbuilding- were coveted, so we guests got the light work. Go up in this canyon and check out this old barbed-wire fence. See if you need to repair it or pull it out and replace it. Doobie and Bagel and I teamed up with one other guy, a forestry major named Grant. We got our tools- a saw, a few hammers, and each a pair of those wire-pulling pliers. A post-pounder. Raingear, but it looked like we wouldn't need it.

In the four months he's been there, Doobie's only seen four guests go out on the job with the workers. You can earn your dinner that way, you see. It's very encouraged, and normally they could use the extra hands. But most guests are parents and they just spend the day checking out quaint local sights, like the llama farm/B&B or the UFO Sanctuary, which apparently consisted of a bunch of folding chairs where people gather and drink and tape the sky, and a big pyramid-shaped addition to the owner's house where the video tapes are available to view and see for yourself. Of the four guests who had gone working, two were my sister and I and the third was my brother's other friend who came up the week before. Doobie was definitely the most outdoorsy of the bunch- the others were granola-types, and he's more of a jerky-type, if I can mangle that metaphor. He likes huntin' and fishin', not just hikin' and campin'. He was the head firestarter, which tickled me, to think of how the ability to get a good fire going doesn't come into play much in my regular circle of friends.

We drove east, past the Sleeping Beauty, a mountain shaped like a sleeping woman. We came to a town that managed to be even smaller than Trout Lake. We waited at a gas station/general store/hunting lodge, staffed by the only Indian I saw up there, presumably a Klickitat. The town dog came over and played fetch with us. Soon we were joined by a Sponsor, an employee of the forest service who was along in case there was any chain-sawing to be done.

As we drove east, the countryside became less like a rainforest and more like a desert. The trees became Sarasotas and White Oaks, and the underbrush became more scraggly. We left the road at a locked gate that indicated this was Champion International’s land, and we drove on an old logging road along the river in that picture below until we came to Dead Horse Canyon. I had a funny feeling about this valley, sitting there for a hundred years waiting to be logged again. I had worked at Champion Paper to put myself through college, and saw the trainloads of pulp unloading at the front end of the mill, and here I was at the headwaters of not only that process but the entire paper trail itself.

My work life revolved around paper for a long time… I worked in the mill, at a recycling plant, and five years in the xerography mines. I made it, used it, and processed it once it was used. When I entered college the big-ticket major was Paper Science, but I’d already seen exactly what those majors do for the rest of their life- working in the paper mill was plenty of inspiration, but only to educate myself to where I wouldn’t have to work in the paper mill any more.

Out of college my first job was the Relay, a contractor of the State of Ohio that required a certain amount of anonymity. They built the office in a storage unit on the lot of a Federal Document Repository, which were basically other storage units with armed guards. The sort of place that the Ark of the Covenant is sitting in if you believe what you see in Indiana Jones movies. That was the final stop on the paper train, there or the landfill. So I’ve pretty much followed paper its whole life now. Some civil engineer with a sense of humor had named the road to the repository “Paper Trail”.

Back at the head of the paper trail, we tromped about a half mile into a gulley that was about a half mile wide. A creek led into the river here, and they had put up a barbed-wire fence to keep out all the free-range cattle that were wandering around those parts. Cattle eat everything down to nubs and they also introduce a lot of nutrients into an ecosystem. I think I stepped in a lot of nutrients that day.

The old fence was all washed out and covered in fallen trees. We thought we would have to replace it but the forest ranger radioed in and somebody told him that a new fence had been built, up the creek a bit along an old log-train track bed. So we hiked up there and found it. We spent the morning walking that fence, tightening it up now and then. For those of you who’ve never had the pleasure, tightening a barbed-wire fence is done with this tool that looks like a pair of pliers with a hammer claw sticking out one side. You grab a barb and use that claw like a lever to tighten the wire, and then you either hammer a staple over it (wooden posts) or clamp the staple around the stake (metal posts). Meanwhile the ranger walked the old fence and chainsawed any fallen trees off of it. The first time he started that thing up a flock of turkeys took off right by Doobie. Those turkeys were everywhere, I’ll bet we saw thirty that day. Grant and Doobie said the thing to do is chase ‘em around, as they’ll run a bit before they reluctantly take off. A turkey is not nature’s most maneuverable flier. It being winter, most birds were gone south, but we also saw stellar jays (a beautiful bird) and bald eagles cruising the river for salmon.

We had lunch by the river, watching an American Dipper do the same thing.

posted by Johnny on 30.12.02 |

A big popped lava bubble, with my brother's shoe for reference.

Lava worms, with a flashlight for reference.

The only thing living down there were these mushrooms. How'd they get a mile down in this tunnel when the only moving things that have been there are hippies? Hmmm... I wonder what kind they are...

A quarter for reference.

posted by Johnny on 29.12.02 |

posted by Johnny on 26.12.02 |

I swear there’s something about biomass that affects the human spirit. Maybe it’s the thousands of specific smells combined. Maybe it’s the humidity and oxygen exhaust from the plants. But a greenless city is a sick place, and when you travel from that environment into a rainforest, you feel it in every cell.

The water tastes better, I can tell you that. Especially when it only traveled ten miles from the glacier it came from.

We scrounged through the walk-in fridge for something to eat. It was packed, but they eat very healthy up there- all-natural, all-organic, mostly vegan. Plenty of fruits and vegetables on hand, which are tasty. Not too much greasy stuff to be found… I think if I lived there I’d have logs of lamb shipped up and keep em revolving in my room so I could sneak a gyro whenever I needed. Which isn’t much. I’ve quit meat before and it felt great, but there’s not much on this planet more delicious than the stuff, so I would always have some now and then. I crave it.

But most of what they ate was vegan slop- you know, that casserole of miscellany that vegans choke down and pretend that its not like eating puke. Why is vegan food either sparse (like wheat-germ-and-banana-chips), or slop, or a nasty soybean simulacrum (tofurkey, fakin’ bacon, etc)? Answer: Because if it’s not, it’s not called vegan food- it’s just called “spaghetti” or whatever. The best meatless food is food you don’t even notice is meatless. Having meat with every meal is an American thing, and because of it, the stuff singled out as meatless is usually a deliberate substitution, which is how we get a fake soybean tube simulating a hot dog- which considering its makeup is not something one would expect to be duplicated.

So why, living in this valley of organic produce and having plenty of ingredients at their disposal, were the folks there eating vegan slop? I was to find out after my first day at work.

But it was Sunday morning, and we ventured up the forest service roads in search of a few waterfalls. The roads were officially closed, and so we ended up backtracking and trying different routes like a mouse in a maze. We’d drive way up the mountain, the snow would get too deep, and we’d turn around and come back. Saw a grouse up there, though. Eventually we made it to a trail head and went for a hike.

Moss hung everywhere, and on top of that, snow, so the woods were a calico of green and white. We passed giant boulders in their eons-long strolls downhill and the stumps of trees of unimaginable girth. We sat on a rocky butte and looked out over the river gorge, and we lingered by waterfalls and tried to listen to what they had to say. We managed to make it to the Big Tree, an old-growth behemoth that was probably there when the only white people this continent knew were Vikings. There aren’t that many really old things in America, so when you find one, it stands out.

Returning to camp, my sisters took a break while my brother and I suited up in the full-body raingear that he and his coworkers work in when the weather is particularly nasty. We trekked into the woods behind his dorm, sloshing through the rain and the melting snow until we reached a large sinkhole with a roof built over it and a ladder descending into the darkness. A lava tube had collapsed here, and the ladder set us down on the pile of debris that had fallen. From there it was another 30 ft to the base of the tube.

The size and smoothness of it was breathtaking. It appeared as though a worm thirty feet across had burrowed through the earth for a mile, leaving the walls and ceiling almost featureless. At one end the ground rose to meet the ceiling, and at the other, it opened into a gigantic cavern, easily 70 feet high. In this cavern, a steel staircase led up to a hole in the ceiling where we could see the bottom of a house. From the staircase led the remains of a walkway and set of shelves that had been used to make cheese. I thought the homeowners were pretty brave, trusting that cave not to collapse. It was such a big cavern that up there on the staircase I trembled from the height. I’d never been afraid of heights while underground before.

Doobie and Green’s coworkers had held a drum circle in there at the equinox. I can’t imagine how much fun that must have been. We clicked off our lights for a while, enjoyed a brewski and watched the phosphenes dance.

My brother doesn’t talk much, and eventually, I stopped too. We sat in absolute darkness with only trickling water and cool stone as stimulation. What a lonely place to be, underground in the woods. I realized that in the city, I’m probably no more than 20 feet from another person, all the time. “Alone” is a false concept for the city dweller. But out there in the woods, it becomes a very real concept. Some people spend their whole lives trying to get away, and some people spend their whole lives trying not to be alone.

I prefer the company of my fellow humans. All I have to do to feel alone is look up at the vastness of the stars.

posted by Johnny on 23.12.02 |

Saturday morning, I met my sister at O'Snare International Airport, where she had flown from Daytucky Ohio. I'll call her Bagel. We hopped on a flight bound for Portland, and after a nap and a viewing of "Spy Kids 2" (two thumbs up to Steve Buscemi's pariah mad scientist), we landed and met my brother Doobie and his sweetie, Green, who I consider an additional sister. We headed west along the Columbia river, passing the Bonneville dam (power plants being part of my love of infrastructure) although we didn't have time to stop for the tour. We did stop briefly at the Multnomah falls, where we saw four big ole salmon lingering at the base pool, no doubt wondering how they would make it up that 620 foot rapid.

Upon reaching Hood River, OR, we turned left, crossed the Columbia, and began driving uphill. We passed orchards and llama farms, and stopped in BZ Corner at the Logs restaurant, which happened to be the closest place that Doobie could go to watch television. It was populated by the typical residents of the area: Migrant workers and burly woodsman types. I’m sure it would take years for me to truly understand the culture, but it seemed an interesting mix of the best parts of redneck and hippie culture. Everything about the towns and people betrayed a love for the earth but without the aversion to hard work, and a love of personal freedom but without the disgust for things granola. I’ve only ever observed this blending of redneck/hippie in the remoter areas of Ohio and Kentucky. I dined on fried gizzards and some sort of oyster sandwich, and we headed on our way.

Doobie and Green live behind the Ranger’s Station in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest at the edges of Trout Lake, Washington. The Northwest Service Academy they work for is a branch of the Americorps. They have three dorms there, a dining hall, and a commons area. Behind them are countless acres of wilderness. Ten miles to the north is Mount Adams, which people kept speaking of as if it were the moon, saying, “Is the mountain out today?” It was not out, as it was pouring down rain and continued to do so through the next day.

Thirty-two young men and women live and work together there, and it seemed a tight-knit family. Some were definitely wary of this intruder into their circle, but most were very overtly friendly. All the men had beards, and half had dreadlocks. They all dressed in a very utilitarian manner, as they spent each day working on trails and such in the surrounding areas. They were divided up into teams- the fish team concentrated mainly on helping the salmon population, for example, and my brother’s forest service team did things like remove invasive species. Each month, they had to stay home from work for a day to cook for the others, a day to clean the commons, a day to maintain the fleet of vehicles, and a day to maintain the tools they used. Bear in mind that I’m explaining their work and responsibilities to the best of my understanding, but they had so many tasks and jobs that it was hard to remember it all.

What struck me immediately was the motivation these people had for their work. It was the only job situation I’ve ever observed where love for the work was the primary motivator. It seemed that the harder the task, the more it was coveted as a job to do. They operated with very little supervision- when I went out with them there was nobody supervising- and it seemed there was no trace whatsoever of slack. It took me a while to figure out how they made sure that everybody did their share, until I realized that none of them would be there if they didn’t love working outdoors.

The night we arrived, some of them were doing crafts, so we sat down and made some envelopes out of scrap paper. The commons had a pool table, ping-pong, and foosball, as well as a large video library and a playstation. Other things folks did in their free time included going down to Portland for concerts and the outdoor activities you’d expect- cross-country skiing, hiking, even tree-climbing.

Alcohol wasn’t allowed on the premises, so we walked five minutes beyond the fence to a fort my brother and a friend had rigged up, it was an alternate fire circle to the usual one with a little roof over it for use during the ever-present rain. We had a few drinks, a bit of the Pacific Northwest’s finest herb (legendary among stoners), and talked into the night while the coyotes howled as if they were partying just beyond the next ridge.

My brother is what you call an “old soul”, and at some point he ceased being my younger brother and became my older one. He would rather be fishing than doing anything else. He never talks unless he has something to say, a quality that I lack severely. He knows four names for every tree, flower, bird, or animal: The scientific name, two colloquial names, and the name your grandparents would have called it. He also knows what can be eaten to survive, what tastes delicious, what makes good toilet paper, and what trees will yield bait worms in their fruits or bark. Green showed me a berry that will make a good laxative, for example, and Doobie showed me not one but two plants that make excellent toilet paper.

That night we slept the sleep of the jet lagged, and woke up the next day as the sun rose, ready for adventure.

posted by Johnny on 19.12.02 |

As Taliesin has pointed out, Walgreens photo department sucks. Well, they don't suck as much as, say, Blockbuster's pricing (five dollars a rental? I could go to a movie... no wait, they cost ten bucks), but there's definitely something weird going on down at the Wall of Greens.

It seems that the famous Walgreens family insanity has infected their clerks. Sometimes they are so surly that I feel like I surely must have misunderstood them, they didn't really say what I thought they said to a customer. But it really gets weird when it comes to pricing and services (but remember this may be a product of the lunacy of my local Walgreens staff):

I bought their free-refills camera. The deal is, as long as you get one-hour photo developing, you get the camera refilled for free. I carry a camera at all times and don't want to worry about an expensive digital camera, so seven bucks is perfect for something that could be crushed or soaked or whatever.

Now, you can't just get the picture CD without prints. I can understand that. I can picture the machine that develops the film, scans the negatives onto the CD, and makes the prints not having a no-prints setting. So even though I only want digital copies, they give me prints anyway, and I usually just give them to the subjects.

You can either get one-hour developing, non-one-hour developing in-house, or the kind where they mail it out. The weird thing is, it's cheapest to get it done in one hour. It's more expensive if you want to wait three days, though of course you can just have it done in one hour and not pick it up. I can only assume that Walgreens wants to lessen the load on their bulk processing centers, or drive customers to the one-hour deal, or it costs more to mail it, or whatever. Fortunately, my local Walgreens has the ability to develop film in "one hour" (usually three or four but I don't mind) and scan it onto a picture CD, thus satisfying the free-film deal and getting me what I want. In this case, the weird pricing benefits me.

The trouble comes when I go to the other Walgreens, a few blocks north, which I would only do if I was also going to the video store. They don't have the CD machine there. And they won't let me pay for one hour developing but let them take longer to send it out! If one-hour cost more, it would be simple, I would just pay the higher price and I'm sure they wouldn't care. But because it's less, it's like I'm scamming them by paying to have it done in one hour but allowing them to take three days. I can't pay for the three-day developing because then I don't get the free film. AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! It's like I have to bribe the lady... "Psst... I'm going to pay you to develop this in one hour... but I'll slip you a little something if you'll take three days to do it."

posted by Johnny on 13.12.02 |

So there's a bill being hooted about proposing a public indoor smoking ban. It would apply to all restaurants, bars, and stadia (since those are pretty much the last places you can smoke).

Ditka's all up in arms, and for good reason- his restaurant caters to cigar-chompin, park sassidge-eatin', hart-attack-havin' Bears fans like himself. Proponents of the measure say he's a shill for the tobacco industry, that he's listening to false figures from them about the effect it has on business. That's a load, right there. Who believes a report from the tobacco industry? I'm sure Ditka's quite set, financially. Ditka just wants to be able to sit in his own restaurant and smoke a stoge.

I agree that employers have a responsibility to manage risk in the workplace. But what this would mean is that employees and patrons alike don't have the *choice* to accept that risk. That's bullshit. Life is risk. Everybody who moves to California knows that they're moving to another country, if not planet, and accepts that. Everybody who doesn't live in California doesn't for a reason.

Every restaurant is allowed to choose whether to have a smoking section. But what fool decides to work in a smoking bar but objects to the risk of secondhand smoke? This is the kind of freedom-means-my-idea-of-freedom that the knee-jerkers in California propogate, while the real residents don't give a shit because either a) the air is worse or b) they're so rich off their military contractor job that they breathe canned air. It's perfectly in line with this thinking that meat be banned in restaurants and bars, because cooking meat produces gas-phase aromatic hydrocarbons, a carcinogen that affects even the non-meat-eaters. So what's next for bar employees to whine about after that, a public ban on drunken assholes macking on them? Nobody ever went to work in a mine without knowing it was dangerous- heck, these days they make you sign a form that has a set payment for whatever body part you lose. Compared to the risks of industrial work, service work is a breeze.

Since when did the left stop being about the common man and start being about the politics of victimization? It's everywhere these days- feminists who don't seek to empower women in the face of risk, but rather seek to eliminate risk from women's lives (an impossible goal). Vegetarians and vegans who don't make their choice for health, economic, or environmental reasons (all very sound decisions), but rather to save the feewings of the widdle animals, as if Nature didn't consist of everything eating everything else from the beginning of time. This mentality extends to personal rights- "not only am I making the decision to avoid smoking establishments, I'm going to make the decision for you, too."

I agree the stadia should be smoke-free- you don't get to choose where you see da Bulls. Let any restaurant or bar they want ban it. But it's crazy to think that every single smoker out there is doing it because they were duped as children, have been addicted ever since, and are clueless about the danger and need to be rescued. Some people like to smoke. I like to smoke- but only when I'm drinking. In bars. I'm all for separating smokers and non-smokers- I wouldn't want my choices to infringe on them- but jeez, you start legislating risk and there's no point to living. Bungie jumping and rollercoasters are all about the perceived risk. Meat- raw, red, juicy meat- is well worth the risk. Fries are worth the risk. Smoking is almost desirable because of the risk.

At the Clark & Barlowe hardware store on Orleans & Grand, you can smoke. This policy says much, much more about the store than merely their decision regarding the risk they are exposing their customers to. They don't give a shit about that, in fact. You can't browse- you ask the guy with the cigar and the "It's God's Job To Judge Bin Laden- It's the Marines' Job To Arrange The Meeting" hat what you want and he goes and gets it. If you don't know what you want, maybe you should go to Home Depot. Clark & Barlowe knows that there are people out there with real problems and real issues, and that the world is a tough, dirty, dingy place. The hi-rise construction worker with the missing fingers, shopping for Hole Hog bits, knows all about risk.

It's a symptom of privelege to be worried about something as petty as cigarette smoke. Quit whining, or me and Ditka are coming over to expose you to a little risk.
posted by Johnny on 11.12.02 |

The Rat Patrol scurries through the mist. More pics of this ride tomorrow at chicagofreakbike.
posted by Johnny on 10.12.02 |

Whew! Crazy weekend. Wednesday was my birthday, which was spent on the road in Wisconsin, and I received from my parents a bonus pack of Spam, which included a free can of the new Hickory Smoked flavor. If you're a Spam fan, you gotta try it, it's pure redneck gourmet. Deeeee-licious! I managed to sneak a little for breakfast Thursday morning, then gorged on Turkey etc until about Sunday when I was turkeyed out, and have been eating Spam for every meal since then.

We had a little Thanksgiving meal for the orphans who were stuck here, plus a few transplants whose families didn't celebrate it. Singular Girl did most of the cooking, and I tried to convince her that traditionally my role was to carve the turkey she cooked, then pass out on the couch watching football while she cleaned up the dishes. She didn't fall for it.

Friday was Critical Mass, which is why I was at Da Mare Plaza dressed as Santa. It was sweet that little kids kept coming up to me and hugging me, but annoying that some parents decided to use me as a cheap cop-out of waiting in line for the real Santa and kept making their kids tell me what they wanted for xmas. And then this little girl came up to me, maybe five years old, and gave me a present. It was a bar of soap, wrapped in white paper with some indecipherable little-kid drawing and writing on it. Her grandma explained that she had wanted to give out presents down at the tree-lighting ceremony so they wrapped up some soap for her to give out. Granny was acting like "these wacky kids" but I thought it was the most darling thing, this little girl who wanted to hand out presents to strangers and decided that Santa should have one, too, because after all Santa gets the shaft when it comes to presents. After hearing about a thousand pedophile jokes from smarmy teenagers, that little girl replenished my hope for the world.

Saturday, our apartment became sort of a tattoo parlor, as two of us got ink and about eight came to be looky-loos. Piloto worked a bit on Tejas's ring of leg-flames (Kabuto claimed he was only getting them so he would never have to find two matching socks to wear) and he worked on me a little bit. It's so much closer to the ancient ritualisitic feel of tattooing to have it done by a close friend, in your own home, with many other friends around to distract you from the pain. I felt... I'm having a hard time expressing how I felt, there was a rush of excitement, but also a sense of belonging... the etching of a design of spiritual importance to me permanently into my skin, which also left a permanent mark of my friendship with Piloto. He's one of those friends who you instantly click with, and no matter how much time has passed since you've seen them last you're always close, and they would never dream of pulling any drama on you. Sort of like how, with family, it takes a lot to drive family members apart, because they know they'll always be related and so they better be forgiving. The best friends are ones you always forgive, and who always forgive you, because you're both resigned to the fact that you'll be friends forever so you might as well save the drama for your mama. Looking back at my life and the friends that I've kept and the ones that have pulled petty shit or been intolerant of my petty shit, it's amazing to me how clear it was all along the difference between the low-maintenance ones and the high-maintenance. I've even been closer to the high-maintenance ones but frienships are like stars, you know... the hotter they burn, the shorter they last. I must admit that Singular and I have never had the sort of storybook romance that so many people seem to wait forever for. Instead, it's been like a slow burn- trust and friendship and caring have been there all along, from the first day we met really, and almost seven years later I still feel like our relationship is building, burning hotter with each passing year, rather than fading slowly from the supernova of the infatuation phase. It's stronger now than it's ever been, but that's a direct result of some hard work on both our parts. Here's a hint for you single types- do everything in your power to stay single. That way, when the right person comes along, you won't be able to fight it.

I've always wanted to get some work done that my brother designed. The problem is that so many people have asked him to design tattoos that there's a waiting list. Maybe I can convince him to bump me in two weeks when I visit him.

Oh, yeah, I called the White House the other day. Not everyone can drop out of life and be some stinky anarchist trustafarian with a self-righteous attitude about his activism. The bulk of progressive change comes from everybody doing a little bit, whatever they can, to make the world a better place. So as part of my attempt to include little bits of progressivism in my day, I called the White House opinion line to voice my opposition to war in Iraq. While my ranting and raving here in my diary often overshadows it, I do believe that this is a great country, which is why I'm staying here to fight for the Constitution rather than fleeing on the wings of my privelege to some snooty European country where I will think I'm tres chic while never realizing that the locals hate me. One of the great things about this country is that elected leaders do care, very much, about what their consituents think. They do a lot to try and pull the wool over our eyes, but their greatest fear is of public disapproval. So I know Dubya didn't get my message but I know they added a check to the "agin" column in my name.

It was cool. I dialed (202) 456-1111. After holding for a bit, an operator asked me what state I was calling from. Then she said, "What message would you like me to give the President?" and I told her. Then she said, "I'll give the President your message." What a country! I urge you to give ole Dubya a call and voice your opinion, no matter what it is. Unless it's "I'm-a gonna keel you." Don't do that. Nobody kill anybody. After all, isn't that the true spirit of xmas?



posted by Johnny on 3.12.02 |

posted by Johnny on 2.12.02 |

The Roommate #28.
posted by Johnny on 1.12.02 |

JohnnyPayphone@yahoo.com