CONTRACTS AND CHEESE

Yay! I finished my last shift of internship and i am now officialy eligable to be a utah state theraputic guide. Apparently work likes me because they have offered my a one year contract. Good pay, awsome co-workers and a six and a half day weekend were compelling reasons to sighn on for the long haul, and the fat contract bonus was too much to resist. I never thought of myself as the type of guy who would sign a contract to work for a corporation. Then again the great basin desert is my office, and it isnt every day that you find a company where you will hear people say, with no hint of sarcasam, "I love our administrators".

This shift in the field i made a wheel of cheese to enter in the primitive crafts contest at the seasonal "shindig", which is held at the single outpost in the middle of our field. I took a two pound powederd milk ration and boiled it with some salt till the curd seperated. I then strained the whey into a nalgene using a bandana. Of course, without retin the cheese would not harden, so i baked it at a low temperature in a pot till nearly all the moisture had been driven out. Everyone said it was a shoe in for first prize becauase it was so different (most people entered things like stone knives they had knapped or nicely whittled spoons) or at least would get a good laugh. But shindig was postponed due to snowstorms, so i ate it.

Life goes extremely well on most fronts. I have a great job. My friends sarah, johanna and i are appartment hunting in st george this week (soon i will have a place to live!). I am looking forward to a hike this weekend with the beautiful young woman i met st patties day. She in quite intiuging in that she knows hot to make hundreds of string figures and knots. She has also been known to play sad songs on the fiddle her uncle carved her.

Yet in spite of all this, i still feel slightly malcontent. I am not sure what it is that causes this unease. Perhaps it is all the paperwork i need to finish before i can officialy qualify for guide status, or perhaps it is because I am still living on the streets, but it is tough to shake the sense that even now somthing is still not quite all right. Ah well. So it goes.

May the sun shine upon you all, and may the lord smile upon you, my friends, till we all meet again at the great cheesewheel in the sky.

OF ANARCHY AND IRISH CREAM,
AN EXTENDED ST. PATTYS DAY

Friday I spent all day looking for a place to live. Many people have been generous and welcomed me into their homes, but it has been nearly a year since i have had an adress or a bed to call my own. I desperately want my own base of opperations. However, endevoring to find even a cheap rat hole appartment call my own proved frustrating. By dusk I was tired, angry, and wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball and be left alone.

But of course it was St Patricks day! No sooner had i arrived at my crash pad for the evening (a friend was letting me sleep at her house, which was suppostedly going to be empty for the weekend) than a stout, hearty, bushy bearded man wearing a battered fedora burst through the front door. He had a large sack of beer and liquor and small, shy, comely lass in tow. In a buisnesslike way he set about celebrating the holiday. He tossed me a brew and ordered in a silly accent "Drink er up, boy!"

On a nortmal day i would have declined, or had just one drink out of courtesy. But I was in just the right frame of mind for some self abuse. "may you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows your dead!" I declared. Fifteen minutes later we consumed two foul tasting beers and two or three shots of good whiskey apeace. Then the girl offered me a glass of the irish cream which she had produced from somewhere. Soon we began to dance.

The radio blared cheftains as we hopped about in merry fashion, ryan (the bearded gentleman) and i clumsily and the girl Emily rather more expertly. A short while later one of the residents of the house arrived with some friends in tow. They joined us. We danced and shouted and played euchre and egyptian ratscrew till the early hours. As I lay on the soft carpet drifting off to sleep, two thoughts passed through my head:

1. Drinking makes me sleepy but st. patricks day is still a pretty good holiday
2. It would be easier to sleep if the large, burly, bearded man in the battered fedora would stop shouting my name and trying to wrench my arm off in an effort to get me to play more drinking games.

There is yet more to this story, as we declared teh next day st. Paties day extension. But I will not divulge much about that here. I will say only that saturday included a trip in an ancient van to see some belly dancers, the bohemian rhapsody, and a run in with the police. If you want to know the rest, you will simply have to call me at my new phone number:

435- 313-1591

And of course, if you could not tell, i think i have made some new friends

MEGA POST

Hi everyone! Yes David, i am still alive and back from my third shift in the great basin. Sorry i have not posted more regularly, read on and you will understand why. I have kept entries for each of the last three weeks in my notebook and am posting them all now. Here is the Report yall:

THREE WEEKS AGO

My first shift with a student group. It was awsome! I was assigned to the adult student group, ages 18-25. The students had a variety of problems: drugs, gang affiliation, depression etc. On the whole were slightly more mentaly stable than the kids I worked with at boyscout camp.
The senior guide Jordan (aka lynxy) gave the group a short talk about knapping stone and pressure flaking, an art I quickly discovered I have a tallent for. Stone fell away like butter beneith the pressure flaker. Hertzian fracture cones ripped through the chirt and obsidian we found and by the end of the week i had a fair size collection of very keen stone arrow points, blades, and scraper tools. If only friction fires could be this easy! It was almost as if some partial memory from a past life was a wakened.
I have coveted nice stone points since i was young and quickly discovered that others did too. However, trading equipment with students is against company policy. to compensate, I began dropping a point or two around the campsite or on the trail as gifts to others who might pass the same way.
Friction fires are an important skill at redcliff. Probably the most important skill. All fires are started by friction and the ability to procure certain food items is dependant on the ability to create fires each week. Good fire starters take pride in thier skills, and are treated with much respect.
At the end of my training session i was the only person who had not yet lit a single friction fire. For the first six days of this session i was not able to start one either. I would patiently spend hours carving away wood from my fire board to make a notch (Using stone tools only, I vowed not to touch a metal tool till after I got my first fire), only to have the fireboard break in half when I tried to use it. Students around me lit fires with ease, while i patiently spent each day getting nowhere.
Finaly it was the second to last day of the shift. It was cold and rain was pouring down. The group was huddled under a tarp working on various skill projects, while i worked on improving my painstakingly cut and crafted handmade fire set. I bowed and bowed. Wind whipped rain under the tarp and soaked my spindles. Smoke and punk poured from the fire board. The rain turned to sleet. A burning coal fell from the latest notch I had carved. I placed the coal carefully into a nest of fine bark and gently blew. the coal grew stronger and brighter. I blew harder. The ball of bark burst into flames! The entire group cheered. I lay on the soggy ground, the rain soaking into my already muddly clothing, and smiled. It had taken me three weeks to get fire. It was worth it.

TWO WEEKS AGO

At the end of the shift the staff went on an overnight retreat to Zion national park. We played paint ball in the labrynth canyons near Hurricane, utah, then proceeded to enter the borders of zion itself. Zion is aptly named. It is a glorious land full of high plateus, dizzying cliffs, and spectacular rock formations framed against the bluest sky i have ever seen. No words can properly describe this holy place, it must be seen to be belived.
In a canyon in the heart of this sacred place captains of industry have built a strip of luxury hotels, discount shopping outlets, and wilderness themed overpriced resturants. In my whole life i have wanted only a few things more than I wanted to see this strip naplamed and burnt to the ground.
The retreat was awsome but when it ended i was faced with a dilema. I had no place to live and almost no money. I needed to find a way to spend the next five days till work started again. I spent my last few bucks on a cheap hotel, called a few friends, and then slept like a dead man for the next 14 hours. It was the first time i had seen a bed in almost four weeks.
The next morning I awoke bright and early at noon in Cedar City, where staff director mark had dropped me off. I had been invited to a potluck supper in St. George that evening, and having only four dollars left I decided to save my cash for a dish to share and hitched a ride to St. George.
Riding the thumb is in my opinion the finest way to travel ever invented. Within minutes of reaching the on ramp I was hurtling tward my destination. I was lying in the bed of a pick up truck, soaking up the sun and staring up at the soft clouds above. I felt completely free. I could travel by thumb to california if i wanted, or to mexico, or to boston, or anywhere. America was completely open to me.
Two hops later I stood on St. George Blvd, a new city at my feet. I failed to find my friends house in time, but it hardly mattered. St george was 70 degrees. Palm trees swayed in the breeze. I layed my sleeping bag on the ground among some pines behind the local college ball field. For the next four days, that was my home.
St. George is a town of many marvels, and i spent my days exploring every nook and cranny. I eventualy caught up with the friend i had come to see and she invited me to stay with her. I said I felt bad about imposing on her. She smiled and said "dont worry, it all comes around".
This degree of generosity made me uncomfortable. I am well adapted to living in the dirt and being spit on (litteraly and metaphoricaly). Perhaps so well adapted that I do not know how to deal with much else.
I stayed with amber hawk and her friends a few nights and discoverd that we had much in common. Her roommates Johanna and Ben both play capoeira, and we had a fun time exchanging moves and playing jogo bonitia in their large living room. It was good to play and we all agreed that we had to get together again next off shift.
Life in st george is cool but my stay here has been weird. Example: I stopped at a resturant to buy a burrito one day. After I had ordered, the man behind the counter informed me he could not accept a credit card. I had no cash till I got my first paycheck. We both stared at each other for a minute. "dont worry amigo," He said. "you can pay me next time you come here, if you ever come here again".
I began to protest, feeling very bad about taking the food without paying.
"Its ok" he said, shoving the burrito in my hand. "it will come around".
I have heard that sometimes when there is a lesson for us to learn, that the lesson will come up again and again in different forms untill we learn it. I have a feeling that this has been happening to me a lot lately.
Ben and I discussed this idea on our way back to Enterprise the next day. He was very incitefull and pointed out that it was unfair that i wanted to give freely to people, yet would refuse any help others had to offer. This is an interesting concept and I continue to struggle with it.

LAST WEEK

Amberhawk, Ben, Johanna, and i returned to enterprise together. base sent me to the adult group again. Just before I hit the desert, ben gave me a small, crumpled piece of paper. "give this to your co-guide" he whispered. When I arrived where the group was camped, it was snowing hard. The outgoing guides looked hungry, soaked, and angry.
It is redcliff policy that there are never more than three students per guide. As an intern guide, i do not normaly count twards the guide to student ratio. However, due to mysterious reasons the office had assigned for this group of ten students to be staffed only by Suzie, a very tired, grouchy looking girl who was working a double shift and had been with the group eight days already, and myself. "where is the rest of the staff?" she demanded.
"just me" I replied. I offered her the notes i had taken while meeting with the students therapists earlier that day.
She gave snort and turned back to the group.
The week turned out to be awsome. By the second day suzie calmed down and we began talking. She turned out to be very mellow and personable. She and ben had been secretly dating for the last few months, but they had ended up on oposite shifts and could only see each other at odd moments or at staff change. She had opted to work a double so they could spend their off shifts together. She talked about him with much enthusiasm and was very excited when i told her he had given me a letter for her.
On my off shift I had read up on stories about the stars: the origin of orion, the big and little bears, the pleadies, casiopea, etc. I was nervous that the students would think these stories were boring. However, the first night carl (student names changed for privacy) asked why the north star always stayed in one place. I told the group the hindu legend of the lotus eyed, which explains how the polestar came to be. After a moments pause several students asked in unision "are there any more stories about the stars?"
We told stories and sang songs every night that week. Cat came back, long black veil, and rattlin bog echoed off the lower teatons while we hiked.
One particularly nasty night sleet was pouring down. Suzie had the group build a type of tarp shelter she called the lions den. Inside,students shivered around the fire, trying to get warm. Then, slowly, a sing along began. Bhemian rhapsody emerged, then i lead a hipster version of cat came back, then carl and eddie started to beat box. Both had been drug dealers and gang members, and they began to freestyle about life on the streets, then about life in the desert. Soon suzie took a turn. Then, in the middle of the high desert in a snowstorm, everyone began to freestyle.

I love my new job so much.

I like the idea that i am making a difference, though often this happens in ways I dont expect.

One day carl came to me and said "guess what, i made four fires this week".
"cool man, good job"
Carl had been in the desert for six weeks. Till that day, he had yet to finish any of his phases. The first time i met carl, he had become enraged because he could not start his cooking fire on solo campout. He hurled his fire equipment into a ravine and screamed loudly enough that Lynx ran to his campsite, fearing he was attacking someone. Carls first fires meant that, finaly, he was making progress twards graduating from the program.

"anyway," said carl "I wanted to say thank you."
"for what man? I suck at fires."
"I know. I suck at fires too. The whole time i have been here I never got any. I would get frustrated and quit. But then you showed up and i watched you try and try to get fires and never get any."

"what?"
"You really sucked at making fires. But you never got mad. You just kept trying. And I was like 'if that guy can get a fire, andbody can'."

"uhh... thats great man, no problem".

It all comes around.