In Search Of Beavers

About a month ago, I went for a spontaneous stroll next to the Kokosing River and started to notice something odd going on with the saplings.

A brief search revealed more evidence...


... so Husband and I went on an epic trek last weekend in search of a beaver dam.  We found felled trees on both sides of the river...





...even trails that logs had evidently been dragged down but my amateur tracking skills weren't up to par. Those dam elusive beavers...

At first I thought this might be some kind of beaver something...

...but then last time i went to check it had been mostly washed away in the river. I'm assuming that since beavers need air, at least a portion of the lodge will be above the water. What's left of this was mostly underwater.

You'd think a lodge would be easy to spot.  Those beavers must have one hell of a stomping ground.  It was either invisible or out of our walking range and we covered a pretty sizable stretch of that river.

On our trek we found several critter holes, deer tracks, raccoon tracks, possibly fox tracks, and even a mostly bare, mostly complete deer skeleton whose photos mysteriously disappeared off my camera.

Well, it's beaver breeding season...maybe I'll find them another day.

The Theoretical End Of Poverty

So many political issues seem to revolve around the idea of poverty and conversely abundance.  And while the two main parties would like to think they're at the opposite ends of an issue, I suspect they're a little closer than they imagine.  While not being politically inclined left or right, I've been privy to several conversations between lefties or between righties and it seems my "Switzerland" status seems to lower certain armor that influences communication when in mixed company.  I've seen the tender heart of a republican and surprisingly, yes, it seems they do have hearts.  Likewise, I've witnessed incredible logic and flawless reasoning woven through the banter of democrats.  I don't buy into the stereotypes of heartless, curmudgeonly reps or spineless, weak-minded dems but so many of my friends and acquaintances seem to sling these cliches around like they're actually some kind of useful foundation from which to prove points.

And being Switzerland, I'm constantly frustrated by how easy it has been to divide us and blind us to our commonalities.  Take poverty.  Both parties (assuming they are average citizens) would solve the problem once and for all if they could.  Poverty is both heartbreaking and a nuisance.  It drives down property values, it leads to obesity and malnutrition in the same individual, it pushes up healthcare costs, it leads to more unplanned births.  The poorest neighborhoods are eyesores and hotbeds of crime and watching all this suffering take place in our own communities is very depressing indeed.  Some are afraid of the crime, the litter blowing around...maybe just the whole thing in general makes them feel uncomfortable.  Others take it a little more personally, feeling more sympathy for the underprivileged, uneducated, and the chronically ill lower class.  Whoever you are, I doubt you would want poverty to continue if you could choose.

Where we diverge is how we believe we can go about doing this.  Generally speaking reps choose tough love.  End social programs.  Sink or swim.  The strongest will survive.  Dems choose a more nurturing approach and believe we can make a difference through assisting those who can't help themselves.  To my mind, it doesn't matter which way is better.  What really needs to be brought to the forefront is this:

Until we can agree, that in order to end poverty we must first identify the cause, we will make no real progress.

It's the same kind of thinking that has led this country down the dark path of over-medication.  We simply don't address causes as a people anymore.  We prefer band-aids.  We like to fix the symptoms but we don't like to think about what might be causing them.  We are LAZY thinkers.  And although I try to avoid pessimism at all costs, I am disheartened by how ready we all are to disagree with each other, sometimes just for the sake of argument.  Even if we do suddenly redevelop our mental muscles and really get to it thinking about what led to poverty in this country to begin with and what factors still contribute, our political habits have our minds entrained to pigeonhole everything and I fear it would be a difficult task to come to any kind of consensus.   And to be quite honest, I think it would be difficult to engage the minds of our population in a non-politically aligned activity.  We seem to be addicted to this right vs left, this vs that paradigm.  

An open mind will be absolutely necessary.  We all live here and the world we are currently experiencing as "life in this country" is the cumulative result of 236 years of our "opinions".  Opinions are a reflection of worldview and worldview is what ultimately influences actions and creates the reality we experience.  It would be tempting to find what seems to be a cause and end the thought process then and there, refusing to consider others' "findings", but I think in order to get a complete view of the issue, a complete review of the populations' opinion on the matter is necessary.  I think we need to keep going and asking why, long after we think we've gotten to the bottom of it.  For every answer, we should again ask "but why is that the case?"  Eventually we will come to an "aha moment" as happens when you apply this same technique to some burning question in your personal life.  For an easy example, "Why do I sabotage relationships?"  A month later you get to the bottom of it, finally, after scurrying down a psychological rabbit-hole of cause and effect.  It's a very useful tool for freeing the psyche from limiting inclinations which leads me to think it would be useful on a larger scale.  

Is this possible for an entire nation?  And would everyone even care?  Or are we too distracted with our own busyness to consider it worth our time and mental effort?  One thing seems certain to me.  With every tacit decision to ignore the increasing destitution in our country, we gamble with the fate of our own progeny.

The Night The Beams Of Light Appeared

The parks department in my area is awesome.  There's a packed schedule of woodland activities, even in the midst of February which is a good thing considering I'm getting a little stir crazy under all this cloud cover.  Some fresh air, even without the sunshine, goes a long way.  Last night a couple of fellow good-for-nothing-winter-layabouts and I went for a night life hike, expecting to hear a few owls and maybe a couple coyotes if we were lucky.  We slogged through muddy fields in the dark following our phlegm-swishing guide (I guess the phlegm is necessary to create the proper animal calls) and listened quietly for an hour but we were met with only silence, so admitting defeat, our guide headed us back towards our cars.  As we walked along the path on the edge of a large clearing, out in the distance, a thin white beam of light suddenly flicked on, but didn't illuminate the area around it.  It unfathomably spanned a narrow space between the cloud ceiling and the ground as a pillar of pure white light and then flicked off, just as suddenly.  Then a couple more flicked on in opposite directions and flicked off again.  It happened a few more times, all in different places and we were all pointing and wondering and trying not to bump in to each other in the dark as we watched this eerie scene unfold.  And then it was over.  And I still have no idea what it was.

Coincidentally, I posted this article on FB yesterday about vortexes (vortices?) of light appearing in Latvia and soon after heard from a friend in Minnesota that it seems to be occurring there as well.  It seems to be an exclusively northern phenomenon and possibly connected to the sun cycles.  The columns from that article look natural to me.  I'm assuming (possibly falsely) that they didn't merely "switch on" and appear.  It seems they probably gathered together naturally and slowly. Yet my beams from last night seemed to have an operator at a switch somewhere.

I've witnessed so many odd happenings in life, I don't even think I can remember them all.  I've seen flashing strobes outside my window as a child, I've seen colors appear on a wave in the air, and I've seen the clear night sky light up inexplicably more times than I can count.  In fact, when I sit in my living room and look out my north window, I often seem to catch something gray (that will shine in the sunlight if it's present) moving over the roof of a house in the distance, always to the east, always at the same level.  I've walked around that neighborhood looking for some explanation (backyard zepplins?) but can't figure that one out either.  I never see it when I'm looking for it, only when I'm crocheting and happen to look up, unbidden, just in time to see it moving into the treeline and out of view.  Then there's the case of the disassembled brooch pin that somehow neatly took itself apart overnight on my dresser.  Or that one time my house shook and the dog cowered in the corner and yet there were no reports of earthquakes in the area.

I could go on and on.

So many strange things and yet none of them make any sense.  Somehow, I'm not one of those frothing loonies that becomes a channeler or a conspiracy theorist.  My mind is open but I'll be the first to say, I have no idea what any of this stuff means and to even think that I could possibly make any sense of it in certainty, would really just be arrogant.  I won't say I'm content to not know or understand but every time some new peculiar thing happens, I make peace with it.  But there is this one burning question...

Some people go their whole lives and see nothing out of the ordinary.  Why am I different?

Hedging Bets

For the past 4 months I've been talking about quitting my job.  Not quitting and getting another...just plain quitting.  As in not working.  And yet, despite all my talk, here I am, still hanging on and netting a mere 5k a year.  A job that has me standing in the same place all day with sore hips, sniffing bad perfume, toxic candles, and answering really stupid questions from strangers.

(Customer: Do you carry scrapbooks?  Me: points to big giant SCRAPBOOKS sign.  Yes!  They are actually right here under this giant sign that says SCRAPBOOKS which is directly in front of us!) 

There's the occasional angry abusive customer I deal with but for the most part it's just a simple, mostly boring job that gives me back pain and continual thirst.  (Must always be standing, must never be drinking...what would the customers think if we showed signs of being humans and not work-bots?)  The boredom is okay...I don't mind it too much.  Even this new, what I call "peon status", is okay.  I've been a jet engine mechanic, a staff sergeant in the military, a CFO for a small business, and a traveling district manager of sorts.  This is my first "small" position in awhile and I chose it intentionally for its lack of responsibility.   I wanted to focus more on my real life  and less on work.  I underestimated how frustrating it would be to be treated like a person less experienced and intelligent than I am but still...it's a bearable trade-off.  I work short shifts and shoulder almost no responsibility.  All I need to do is show up and be able to operate a cash register and restock returned merchandise.  Piece of cake.  Except for this one thing.  Or two or three.

Since I don't work very much, and when I do it's in a craft store, I should have pure liquid creativity throbbing through my veins!  I should be pumping out crocheted blankets and upcycled potholders and sweater owls and felted cat fur finger puppets like mad!  I should have at least the first 6 chapters of my book written!  I should be baking whoopie pies all day and have dinner on the table every night at 7 sharp!

I don't.

And while I've been blaming it on work all along...

My shifts are always in the middle of the day.  I can never start any big projects...I always have to stop them to go to work and break my concentration.  There's no continuity.  I'm too tired when I get home to do anything.  Working has zapped all my energy...I don't feel very healthy because I never get to drink at work.  I have something to do on every single one of my days off.  Tuesdays I do my group chi gong meditation, Wednesdays I volunteer at the organic market, Fridays I clean the house.  And on top of it all, I work on Sundays so that means Saturdays are the only day me and the husband spend together so there's another day lost.  My schedule is so screwy, I have no good blocks of time for myself to accomplish anything.


...I suspect that it's all a state of mind and quitting isn't really going to accomplish anything unless I change the way I think about my time.  I need to take responsibility for the way it is instead of blaming my unproductive days on circumstances.  I need to structure time differently.

Of course there's several other good reasons why I should quit.  I've been playing the health card lately.  I've tested quite high for pthalates in the bloodstream and in light of certain recent reproductive issues, I'm a little concerned that the pthalates slathered all over the money and receipts I handle all day are starting to do that awesome endocrine disruption thing that they do.  I'm in my thirties and I haven't had a child yet.  My clock is ticking and I want to do everything I can to make sure I'm healthy enough to have a healthy baby, safely, and without interventions.  I suspect adrenal fatigue, as well,  which is worsened by standing unnaturally all day, my inability to drink all day, as well as my inability to have my usual small once-an-hour snack that once upon a time kept my metabolism in tip-top shape.  Not anymore.  Ten pounds in the past year, which is how long I've worked at this job.  Multiple Sclerosis runs in my family and occasionally I get tingly numbness in my knees, my feet, my fingers.  Especially when I'm stressed, tired, thirsty, hungry, etc.  The fact that I'm starting to sound a little like a crazy hypochondriac has not escaped me.  The list of reasons to quit has been steadily growing for months now and it's getting quite long and ridiculous.  It would lower our income to make bankruptcy easier for me.  (That's another can of worms.)  It would give me the time I needed to write.  It would give me more creative juice.  It would give me the freedom to do that insane master cleanse where I won't eat for ten days.  It will help me be healthy enough to have a baby.  I can get up early every morning and make the husband breakfast because I can always go back to sleep after he leaves.  Maybe I'll have enough time to volunteer at the Bird Sanctuary too.  I can get a puppy and that way I'll be home all day to make sure its trained right!  Etc. etc. etc.

And what it really comes down to is the mother-in-law.  

If I quit, she will disprove.  She's already nagged me (most horrifyingly) to get another job (or 2 or 3 if "need be" whatever that means).   People say "who cares what she thinks!"  Well, it's complicated.  Once upon a time I got into some serious financial trouble and made the worst mistake ever.  I borrowed money from her.  And no...it is not paid back.  Me and the husband have our own views on finances and consider how we handle bills and debt to a private matter.  It seems M.I.L. would like our finances to be separate.  Translation:  she thinks I should be paying her with my money, not with husband's money.  At least, that's what she's implied.  And I, being totally unfamiliar with the concept of people actually meddling like this, have no idea how to handle this except to keep working and earning a measly minimum wage just to keep her from judging me and god-forbid meddling even more.  And that is dumb.

All along, I've been searching for the perfect "legitimate" reason to quit that she could say nothing about.  And then I realized...

...if I don't find my own dreams, reasons, and feelings "legitimate" enough, then I must not have very much confidence in myself.  And that bothered me.  Not being able to stake a claim on my own life is a serious problem.  All because of a M.I.L.???

I am going to South Dakota at the end of March.  I'm resolving to put in my notice before I go.  Will I have the balls?  I hope so.  I really hope so.  I'm scared of not having my own money...of us not having enough money.  Scared that I'll still have no creativity, still get nothing done.  But I feel that now is the time to take a leap.  If I change nothing, nothing will change.  Wish me luck.