“The nation’s been quick to tell veterans how grateful it is. Nine out of 10 veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan told Pew researchers someone has thanked them for their service. At the same time, 84 percent say the public doesn’t understand the problems that military families face. Longtime war correspondent Tom Ricks worries about the widening gap between the one percent of Americans who now fight our wars and the 99 percent who are increasingly detached from military service.

I’m always struck when I’m in that part of America where nobody knows anybody in the military and they’re still sort of puzzled about why people do this and what it means.  Then there’s other parts of the country, usually around bases, where everybody knows somebody, and it simply is a different America.”

I’m a part of that 99% too. I grew up in a place and in a sociology where I was detached from the military experience.  I did not, and could not understand what would make someone feel like their best option was to enlist in the military.

And then I married a veteran.

I wasn’t with Duane when he was in the military; we were in wholly different places. When Duane enlisted in the army, I was a freshman in high school. When I was getting ready to go to college, and trying to figure out what to do with my life, he was in the Airborne Ranger Battalion jumping out of planes. When I was finishing up college, and going to graduate school, Duane was in the EOD unit defusing roadside bombs in Iraq.  And when 9/11 happened, it was just another day in my world where we all stared blankly at the TV screen wondering what this was going to mean in our lives. But on the army base across the country, Duane knew exactly what it would mean for him. It was going to mean that his life would change forever. I went about my life, and he went to fight in a war I barely knew existed.

I don’t feel guilt for the experience I had, and that I have not sacrificed what he has had to sacrifice. But, I need to be clear about a couple things.  I’m not thankful for the circumstances that our country is in. I am not thankful that there is a war we are fighting that is so easy to ignore. I’m not thankful that families are torn apart and sacrificed for a murky mission where it’s unclear who this really benefits.

However, I am thankful for the men and women who day after day believe in something greater than themselves. I am grateful for those who understand that their dedication to their commitments and to their country is greater than their own ambition. I am thankful for the families that standby with bated breath just waiting for someone to come home.

So to all the other vets out there who served, thank you for being willing to stand and keep watch over all that we love and hold dear while the rest of us went on with our lives. Thank for acting, so the rest of us could go on believing that the war was all the way over there, and had nothing to do with us. Mostly, thank you for keeping each other safe, and for bringing my husband home safely to me. My life would not be the same without him, and his would not be the same without all of you.

I spent years by myself. I wandered between cities, states, stages, communities. I can’t really say I was so much trying to put distance between  myself and anything in particular. At least in theory I was moving toward something. It’s been such a wild scavenger hunt. I went out seeking the elements that I used to build the person that I wanted to be, and the person that I am. When the novelty wore off, when I had pulled all the perceived utility from a place, I was gone.

And then you told me that you loved me, and then you left.

I suppose I have earned this turning of tables, but forgive me, I’m not used to being the one left behind. I’ve never been good at hold down the fort. It’s why every spring there is something in me that wakes up with the rest of creation wanting to move after a long cold winter. The feeling of staying is foreign, uncomfortable. I remind myself that it’s not about just me anymore, but thats so much harder to be mindful of when here it is just me. Standing in stillness staring and the horizon wanting to run across the desert at the sun.

“Princess Sacagawea, do you remember the words?”

Of course I remembered the words, I had sung them my whole life, I had heard them sung to me.

“Princess Sacagawea, do you remember how to sing?”

Barely, it seems so long since we sang just to hear our own voices bounce off the water. It seems as if its been so long since I’ve heard her voice.

“Nanook, can we sing the songs of the north?” What I wouldn’t give to be able to sing one more northern song with her. To sing one more melody and watch the smile grow across her face with each note.

It breaks my heart that I didn’t realize how much she had shaped my life until well after she was gone. If I’m honest about the genealogy of it all, she was my grandmother. I always saw her as more of a sage. My first memory of her is as vivid as a photograph. I remember being a toddler and coming around the corner from the living room into the foyer and there was my grandmother, her 5’2 figure covered from neck to ankles in a white fur coat. She introduced herself as “Nanook of the North”, and the only part of that sentence that my 4 year old mind could muster to repeat back was “Nook?”. She has been known by that name to our family ever since.

Having Nook around wasn’t always the easiest. She was a proper woman of her era. She was the matriarch of the family, and expected a certain level of etiquette from her children, and in my case grandchildren. Holidays were always wildly extravagant when she was present, and as a child I never understood why we needed to wear dresses to Christmas dinner when we got to open our presents in our flannel pajamas. She lived in Savannah, where children were seen and not heard. Where we crossed our legs at the ankles. Where we drank tea in sun dresses on the deck before having dinner at the club.

The same woman was somehow transformed when we moved to Wisconsin every summer to join the family on the lake. She carried the same charisma of a woman who knew her place in the world and commanded a presence of people, not through her stature but through her ability to see that social order was maintained. The only marker of the change in the way this presence was manifested was that in Savannah I was “Rachel Hall” and in Wisconsin she always called me “Sacagawea”.

There was a pocket sized memo pad and a golf pencil that was always in her pocket when she was at the lake. It was our special notebook, just for me and her. At the end of the day when the motor boats were done on the lake, before the men would fire up the grill for the evening, we would take her Old Town canoe out on the water. Most days, before we got on the water, I would change into my pink moccasins and the Indian Princess dress that she had sown for me. There were 47 steps between the back porch of the house and the waters edge, and I almost always ran them two at a time, making it down to the shore just in time to grab the paddles out of the boathouse before Nook joined me to pull the boat off the rack.

I’d sit in the bow seat, paddling a little more every year as I grew up. She’d paddle in the back until we were out in the middle of the lake. We’d put the paddles in the middle of the boat, and I’d turn around to be facing her. Sitting in the front of that canoe, it would feel has if we had been transported to another world. She was there, with her salt and pepper grey hair and khaki skirts staring out over the water as it smoothed itself out with the fading light. It was only then that she would pull out the notebook. It was full of songs, some of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. I hate to admit it, but I don’t remember most of their names, and I remember even fewer verses and melodies. The words weren’t what made those moments so special. It was being on the water with her. Looking back now I can still see the look on her face as she looked out at the water and at the trees. This was a woman who had lived her whole life in a white collar society, but when she stepped out of that world there was something in the wildness of the pine and the water that stirred her. She could sing at the same pitch as the loons, and I would sit staring at her, absorbed by the wonder that was this woman who let the water drive her songs.

As I got older I was too busy for canoe trips out on the lake. I had moved on to other wildernesses, and was busy out stretching my own legs and voice across waters that she had never seen, and never would see. I guess in the back of my mind, I thought I could go back at any point and dig the blue and green beaded headdress out of the drawer and go down to the waters edge with two paddles in my hand, looking up the stairs and waiting for her to come down. I’ve justified it to myself by saying that she left too soon, and if cancer hadn’t been so cruel I would have had time to go back and sing with her one more time. I’ve said over and over again that it wasn’t my decision, I needed to find myself among my own lakes and trees, and that by not being able to go back it forces me forward, and that’s what she would have wanted from me.

Whatever the justification, the reasoning, the wondering was about what I should have done, instead of what I did, it’s all irrelevant. It doesn’t change the fact that the first time that I sat down at her grand piano, 5 years after the keys fell silent, I brought both my grandfather and myself to tears. She had left her hymn book open on the stand in the last weeks before she stopped being able to play. (Not that she needed a music book, she could play anything and everything by ear.) My fingers hadn’t been on a set of keys in years, but I played for close to an hour before my eyes were so bleary that I couldn’t see the music anymore and I was angry at myself for not having her gift of being able to pull music down from the universe simply by listening closely. My grandfather appeared in the doorway, and through broken sentences told me that he hadn’t tuned the piano since she died, yet it sounded perfect it us.

“I miss her”

“Me too princess, me too.”

It’s terrible, but all I wanted to do at that moment was yell to him, “That’s not my name! Sacagawea died with her! I’m just Rachel.” Or at least that’s how I felt, but I knew I was wrong. She will be eternal, as will the unnamed songs and verses that are held in the water that still ebbs from the lake to the rivers of the world.

I still go looking for her every once in a while. I start to feel like the world is crazy and that the road to sanity and order is too long to be undertaken. It is at those times that I end up finding myself standing at the shore of some vast expanse of water, just staring at the subtle movement on the surface. The fluidity is soothing and I can hear the songs that she used to sing, and I get just a little bit closer to being able to sing them myself.

And then there are days where you find your self running, though the snow, aching for the water, it might be after all, the only home you have every really known. So you bound down the stairs, unsure if they are even still there under the drifts and duck under the boughs that are hung heavy with ice. The skyline is the same one that you have seen hundreds of times and the colors on the horizon are the same, but its cold, and bitter, and the dock that hangs half on the surface and half in the depths of the water looks less and less like a refreshment and more and more like a failing abandonment, as if the water was so cold that it just could hold on any longer.

Just months ago you were walking here, on the sand bars, and dancing with the water swirling around your ankles, and you were happy. But now the wind threatens to tear the hat from your head and the last few flakes from the storm sting your face. You can’t help but imagine that you are one of those men whose stories you have so often tried to make your own. Those men stranded on the other side of the world, wrapped in fur and wondering if the ice will ever melt, if your ship will survive, and why you even thought to come to such a winter desert in the first place. You keep your eyes from the houses and focus on the water, the ice covered raft, because for just 5 more minutes you want to pretend that they aren’t options, that there is nothing else to think about but living, and staying warm and seeing something that no one else can see for you or could even try to describe to you in words. Just 5 more minutes like this, and you can be whole again? Re-focused? Stronger? Or maybe just content with going back to looking out at this world from behind a window.

You wait until the sun is gone, until the only ones that could possibly see you trying desperately to slip into the past would only be able to see the shadows of your daring escape in the moonlight. You reach the tidal flat and walk out to the iced raft and climb the ladder. You’re not exactly sure what you are thinking. Maybe that by standing there you can get some sense of what it means to be out there, cold, and not really sure what is coming and what is going.

It doesn’t take long to remind you why you always end up here, why this is always the place that you run when you need to clear your head or just get unwound. The water will always be your first love. The wind in your hair will forever be your muse. Even in the middle of a New England December you would rather be here than anywhere else. Everything is white and perfect and the water is quiet and soothing. As you stand there, staring off into the delta you can’t help but notice that you must look remarkably like the waving girl in Savannah; the girl who stood at the light house with the wind in her hair and her skirts waving goodbye to her sailor who may never return. It’s dark, and the moon is on the water, and the wind has blown the stray strands of hair across your face. Your long red skirt painted with the remains of snow and slowly shaking them off as the wind whips it away from your ankles. The scene is exactly the same, the only difference is that no one left you standing there on that cold night in December. You went there hoping that someone would find you. No, you went there to remind yourself that you don’t need to be found, nor have you been left waiting. The problem is, you don’t know what it looks like to be standing in the tension between those two realities.

The man and the young boy share only a few words, the basics, “What’s your name” “Jeremy” “So, where are you going Jeremy?” “Home” “That sounds like a good place to go, who’s at home?” “Daddy”, and then the boy goes back to his french fries. Neither the boy nor I even notice the man pulling a long thin blue balloon out of his bag. I look up from my book again because I hear the boy gasp: the man at the table next to me has just transformed the balloon into an airplane, complete with mom and son drawn into the windows. It seems like such a simple little thing, but the boy lights up, starts flying the airplane around the airport café.

Why are we taught at a young age to just mind our own business? How does minding our own business get anyone anywhere? Minding our own business doesn’t allow us to practice kindness, compassion, empathy, joy, or balloon airplanes. It all seems so simple if you look at it from Jeremy’s perspective. He’s 3, the nice man has just made him an airplane, it’s just that simple.  I wonder how many of these stories I miss everyday by keeping my head down and just getting on to the next thing that has to be done. Why is there something so novel about a business man who carries balloons in his briefcase?

****************

I really wasn’t a huge fan of High School. I know that isn’t an incredibly profound statement as there are lots of people who don’t particularly enjoy High School, but I think I have a different reason: I found High School unstimulating. I distinctly remember my U.S. History teacher asking me to stay after class one day to talk with me about my homework. She wanted to know why I hadn’t been turning in the worksheets that she was assigning. I told her that I didn’t think they were worth my time. She then asked me why I felt this way, and I went on to explain that I was getting an A in her class without them, and if the goal was to get an “A”, then I was meeting my goal without doing the superfluous work. Now, as an educator, I understand how pretentious and annoying that would be to hear, but it’s honestly how I felt. I would be rewarded on my academic achievement, via grades, to get into college, not by my understanding of the material. I figured out how to work the system. I could memorize facts right before the test, and score high enough that none of the other work would matter. I know, it’s not how education is supposed to work, but that is how it ends up working out

Back then the only think that I was truly engaged in was summer. Again, not a superbly profound statement, I know. However, summer was expedition time, and I would take off into some unknown place to see what the world had to show me. Those experiences always brought me to life, and were the places that I felt like the purest expression of myself. In the spring I craved them, and all fall and winter I would leverage their memories to get me through all the long days in windowless classrooms. My senior year, a friend of mine broke down in tears, bawling in the hallway, because she found out that her class rank was 16. She didn’t make the top ten in the class and it brought her to life shattering tears. I had to remind myself that my life worth and value as a human couldn’t be based in a number like that. So I make the decision to leave high school.

In a bout of rebellion against “the system”, I left high school early and take a NOLS semester in Patagonia. (I wanted to thru hike the AT, but the school board said I needed to be doing something “educational” and NOLS issues college credit, so there you go). NOLS was a totally different experience than anything I had really experienced before. I spent 88 days in the wilderness of Patagonia, and they were pivotal for me. I remember one day during our Sea Kayaking section we had to cross the Straight of Magellan. We had been paddling for a few weeks and this point and had learned about tides, weather, maps, technique, etc.  However this was something new. None of us, not even the instructors had ever been here before. We stood on the top of a small rise where we could see the whole crossing and took in the scene. The narrowest part to cross was at the confluence of the Atlantic and Pacific tides. Water would be flooding and ebbing from the two different major bodies of water. As we looked down all you could see was mangled confused water, but we had to cross. We were faced with a real problem, with real and serious consequences, and needed to make a decision. We didn’t need to get across for a grade, we needed to get across to get to the next food cache.

It was during my NOLS course that I came to the understanding that there is a difference between learning and memorizing. On the expedition there was no system to play into, there were not right and wrong answers, and there were no tests or numbers. During my course I saw that learning means taking everything you know, every experience, and throwing it onto a problem. It means wrestling with total failure. It means that you have to be collaborative. I saw that true learning stems from problems and questions, not from curriculum standards. I took this whole experience and went onto college understanding what it was going to mean to be a learner, and how to make my learning relevant.

I believe that in the era of standardization we have lost that special quality that made education interesting. Instead of school being problem based and about teaching individuals how to think diversely and dynamically, we are teaching them how to know a single answer to independent questions, and pretending that all of these thing are free of the real world around us.
The traditional classroom model has mostly gone unchanged since it was developed by the National Education Association’s National Council in 1892 (Litkey, 2004). This board formed a committee of the ten most influential educators of the time with the aim of standardizing high schools on a national level. This committee decided what subjects would be taught and in what order, and this system is still in place today (Litkey, 2004). Most traditional classrooms still operate under the mentality that memorizing of standardized facts is the best teacher, and as a result most students are exposed to learning through information assimilation (Wurdinger, 2005).As a result the contemporary classroom is highly structured in both subject matter, duration of learning experience, and interaction between students and with instructors. Students in these settings are usually presented with problems that have definitive right and wrong answers that change little over time and context (Kitchener, 1990). The presentation of learning as a well-structured problem is most likely an artifact of the need to quantify knowledge in such a way to measure and meet standards of the schooling system (Litkey, 2004).

Most educational models are based on classrooms that are structured in this way as they are the dominant classroom culture in the western world. It is within this “well structured” framework that the literature that most of the cognitive developmental models are situated. To some extent adolescent individuals still think in a way that is conducive to black and white answers, and their cognitive capacities are such that a heavy reliance on these formalized learning structures and sources can be very helpful. However, as the cognitive capacities of individuals change, so should the nature of the classrooms that they learn in. The concept of learning as a memorization of facts and ideas will work at lower levels of thinking, but is fundamentally incompatible with more mature thought structures (Newell, 2003).

I fear that if we cannot get students to a place where they are learning how to think independently, we are seriously stunting their ability to grow and perform in the future. We are putting students at a disadvantage by not modeling in the classrooms ways for them to think about problems in the world around them. We are breeding a mentality in our students that learning and processing is irrelevant, and that what will matter to them in the long run is their ability to navigate systems, instead of creating new ways of thinking.

The schooling system isn’t going to see change anytime soon. People have been advocating for a change to how we do school for decades and still nothing has been done. Where the ball has been dropped in public education, other service industries (such as recreation) have the opportunity to take up the baton and restore the value of curiousity, creative problem solving, and innovation in education.

Anyway, Duane is gone, so its just me and the pup holding down the fort in SLC. He is currently interviewing for NPS Law Enforcement jobs for the summer, so we should know where he will be this summer soon(ish). Him being away isn’t my favorite thing in the universe, however, I know he’s doing what he loves. He’s also getting the opportunity to “test drive” so to speak a few parks for us before I go and join him.

We’ve been talking a lot lately about what life is going to look like after doc school. I’ve been trying to think more diversely about what it means to be an educator and what it means to advocate for students and for wilderness. Today I saw that Denali NP posted a job for an education coordinator. Job description is as follows:

The Education Coordinator oversees a complex and comprehensive education and critical resources issues program that is coordinated with formal education groups and other partners. Multiple natural and cultural themes are addressed through a variety of programs and media that must convey the complex story of the parks represented by the Center. The incumbent of this position is the manager of the education program at the Murie Science and Learning Center, and oversees all education programs offered by the Division of Interpretation that is within the Center for Science, Research and Learning at Denali. The position’s primary purpose is to implement the education programs of the Murie Science and Learning Center throughout the eight parks represented in the MSLC. Duties include direct supervision of education staff, which could include NPS education specialists, volunteers and interns; as well as overall management of the Murie Science and Learning Center facilities and displays.

Sounds too good to be true. Duane was even interviewed for a job at Denali this year. So perfect, just the complete wrong summer (my wedding, Devon’s wedding, teaching summer school, etc). Here’s to hoping that there are similar openings at this time next year.

That said, I should get back to my dissertation so I can actually attempt to graduate.

I guess maybe I’ve just gotten lucky my life has rushed down on me from the horizon and me on it. Somehow in the course of me lacing up my proverbial boots and running headstrong into the universe, I’ve ended up in some of the most remarkable wildernesses in the world. And those wild places have saved me, in both the most literal and metaphorical senses. I didn’t take myself seriously enough to think that I could write for anyone but myself. Then fire happened, and that is when I started to dream, and started to write.

I remember those dreams that I had after the fire so vividly now. There were many dreams, manifestations of the things I feared would have happened to me if I hadn’t been in the backcountry when the heater exploded and the walls started to burn. There were dreams about being stuck in the house. I would wake up and the room would be full of smoke and I’d start trying to feel my way around the bedroom. The problem is that it was just too hot, and there was too much smoke. I knew that there was going to be no way out and I would wake up screaming, for my life, for my world, and for all that I knew I was about to lose.

There were other ones too. There were dreams where I would come home and all that I had was left as a pile of ash where the house used to stand. Sometimes in the debris would be the relics of what I had held dear in my life. Standing in the dust would be the book case, completely unscathed, a monument in the ruin of all the things I had learned, all the things I knew about the world. Other times it would be the pictures, still in their frames, laid out among the ashes. The faces of all those I had loved and still love smiling back at me through the remnants of what had been before the beautiful disaster. It was almost as if they were telling me that they could live forever even though the house could not.

The worst of them all though, by far, was the dream of being lost. It is the vision that lives longest and deepest in my mind. I remember standing in a forest, and it’s a forest that I know well; it’s the wilderness that has always lived inside me. I knew that I had gone searching for myself in these woods so many times. I had found little pieces of myself there, and in doing so, had made proverbial trails and signs through the wild forest. The dream, was of me, standing in the middle of all of these woods and watching the trails grow over, quicker than I could re-travel them. And the signs and trail markers were all starting to rust, fade, and fall from their places. I knew, that I would never be able to continually travel all the trails fast enough to keep them in place, and by the time I would be able to retrace one, the others would be lost. I knew that there was only one map back to all those glorious places of adventure and secrecy that I had loved so dearly. The map was made of the pictures, the journals, and the tokens from those places. And all of those things had burned.

This dream was the most terrifying of them all because I wasn’t so much afraid of losing my life as I was of losing myself.

Please don’t ask me for rhyme or reason, I can’t write this for someone else, for anyone else. Please don’t judge what you read. I’ve been both wrong and right all my life, both together and separately. Read to know a woman who is standing on the verge of her whole life wondering how to reconcile all that has come before in an attempt to know what is to come. This is my statement of all that has come before, but please don’t ask me what comes next.

Technically, the house came, and went, in the middle. But it really stands at the beginning and the end of more than just stories. It was the moment where I realized that the sun can both rise and set all at the same time while the moon runs crazy circles in the skies and the stars stop shining and simply, steadily, glow.

I needed to write the stories. I needed to write before my mind turned facts to fiction, before all the memories faded like a twisted tide of the life I lived. Rather, the life I’m living. I needed to write out of fear that black and white would turn to completely to an even grey. I wrote for me, desperately, feeling as if I was fighting off a closely at bay insanity that started to tear at my memory and into my soul. My words became the needle that stitched together all the wounds that came open in the fire. The words weaved people and places, adventures and experiences, all the sadness and all the glory into an even seam over the wounds, leaving them visible, but not dangerous.

They call me Phoenix, not because I’m rising from the dead, but because I have to live after the fire.

Duane and I have both been pretty busy this summer. Duane is out in the backcountry 8 days on and 6 days off, and I am working two jobs, so finding a whole day for us to spend together is pretty tricky. However, we managed to carve out a whole day for us to go hiking and spend some time together.

We got up pretty early to get a jump start on the trail and went into our usual day hiking mode. Duane prepped his pack, maps, first aid kit, etc and I started into my pack and lunch. We always make PB and J when we go hiking, skiing, whatever, its the one thing that we’ve found holds up in pretty much all weather conditions. What I found interesting though was that Duane only wanted one sandwich, and he always, always has two. So we finished packing and headed out the door.

We drove up into Little Cottonwood Canyon to do a hike that I had never been on and he used to hike all the time when he was in school in SLC. We arrived at the Red Pine trail head and started up the trail. It’s about 3 miles up to the lower lake in Red Pine, and its a fabulous hike. Great views of the canyon through some amazing forest. About a mile from the lower lake we started to run into snow (keep in mind this is June 25th) and find that we are in snow, kicking steps all the way to the lower lake. No bother, we had a feeling this would be the case, so we pull on our long pants and gaiters and hike on.

When we arrived at Lower Red Pine Lake there were more people there than Duane had bargained for so we decided to hike the extra 3/4 mile to the Upper Lake. However, this last 3/4 of a mile was pretty much straight up in the snow. Again, I’m still pretty caught up in the novelty that we are hiking in the snow considering that it’s 90 degrees down in the valley so we are stoked about this.

We hike up and over the divide and find that Upper Red Pine Lake is still frozen (I threw a rock on it and it rested on top of the ice) and has snow all around the edges. So Duane found a bare rock and set his pack down. That is when I found out why he only needed one sandwich. Duane had hidden in his pack 2 bottles of wine (one red and one white, just in case) a dozen chocolate covered strawberries, and a bunch of nice cheese (mmm apple smoked cheddar), apples and crackers. (And I’m still not entirely sure how he hid all this stuff in my kitchen and I didn’t find it, crafty kid!)

We had an awesome lunch, talked and laughed. He mentioned that it was so cool that I was like water and he was like mountains, and how dependent those two things are in the wilderness. How they provide structure for each other, and balance. And then he got down on one knee. And then I burst out into laughter.

I know, not the right response. In my defense though, it just seemed so out of character (or my nerves got the better of me). Duane is a lot of things, he’s steady, loyal, caring, just, unwaivering, and my best friend, but he’s not often sentimental. So the whole getting down on one knee thing…. well…. I didn’t see it coming.

Anyway, he asked me to marry him and to continue to use my watery ways to keep smoothing out his rough mountain edges for the rest of our lives and I said yes.

"Engaged!"... or "we don't know how to use the camera timer!"

After six days of swimming, sunning, water skiing, canoeing, Point drinking, brat eating, and family gatherings, Duane and I (and Sig!) arrived home on Tues afternoon. It was absolutely fabulous to be able to spend some time at home with my family, and for Duane to be able to meet all of them. Duane promises me that the onslaught of Collins/Cotner/Bell/Sleyko and Copp families didn’t make him want to run for the hills. Toward the end of our engagement party at my Dad’s house he even said, “I like the Lake, these are my kind of people, we should come here more often.”  VICTORY.

Aside from all the family introductions and such we also had a few other family accomplishments. First, I have converted Sig into a water dog! The pup used to really not like going into the water, and by the end of the two weeks I had him jumping off the dock! Granted, my little sled dog is a terrible swimmer, he kind of looks like he is drowning, but he manages to make it ok. Second, Daune and I managed to coax Sig into the canoe to go for a paddle. The goal was to get him used to being in the boat so we could start taking him on float trips with us, but he’s not very good at sitting still or sitting in the middle. The dog walking around and leaning up against the sides of the canoe takes the art of keeping the canoe balanced to a whole new level (and it’s a killer oblique work out).

Third: Duane water skied! This is more than just adding another activity to his already extensive list of outdoor pursuits. When we were growing up everyone skied, everyone. As soon as any child could reliably stand up they were placed on some sort of water apparatus to be pulled behind the boat. I told Duane that if he wanted to be part of the family, water skiing would be required. Then ta da! He got up on the 3rd try, and only did one face plant! So proud of you baby.

Finally: Duane and I have now completed our 5th drive across South Dakota without wanting to kill each other or leaving someone behind at Wall Drug. Looks like this marriage might work out afterall.  ;)