fear and traveling

any of you that know me know that i am basically a coward with courage. not too many things i'm afraid to do or try, but more often than not, i need to get past some bit of fear or hesitation. i am not what i would consider reckless, though. i often need a little (okay, a lot) of encouragement when doing new stuff.

the subject of safety has surfaced in a few places again lately. there are so many positions on safety and protection, all across the board. so many different life experiences that can shape our perspectives. as a victim of a violent crime and a person with an anxiety disorder, my evaluation of risk is very personal. it most likely won't be yours, and that is as it should be. we each need to take the time to study the broad base of information available in order to make choices that we are comfortable with.

the united states scares me, sometime scares the bejeebers right outta me. awhile back, there was a couple in an RV murdered and found in the burnt out RV, most likely by those escaped prisoners in the southwest. what i found very striking is that there was so little mention of it, in the press, or in my vandweller circles. did anyone else find that disturbing? the murders, i mean?

i could not help but wonder how that whole scenario went down. was this couple kidnapped in a truckstop parking lot? approached with a smile while stretching their muscles at a rest stop? bushwhacked while boondocking in the desert? i've thought of that many times. i thought about the fact that their weapons were possibly used on them....they certainly didn't protect them. i understand that the prisoners were in possession of the victims guns, at any rate. how would i have fared if i had been the one approached by those prisoners? where would my weapons have been? would wasp spray, a machete, a 9mm have helped? would my intuitive alarm have gone off? would it have gone off in time? or would i have answered some smiling stranger inquiring about my dog with the cute stripe on his nose, oblivious to danger.....

i am no more afraid than i was before. i still intend to get back on the road as soon as i am able. i will still stay at truckstops and reststops, and way up in the hills in the desert all alone. i will continue to hone my awareness and my intuition, and try not to lose the joy of spontaneous meeting as i travel. i will tweak my weapons and the skills of using them, as i practice ways to avoid that need. i will still operate on a faith that everything in the universe is exactly as it should be.....

a big debate with strong opinions is regarding the dangers of traveling to mexico. i hear and read alot about killings there related to the drug war. if you are messing with the wrong cartel, you are liable to lose your head. that almost goes without saying. i just read a link about 20 people being killed at a home in mexico. that sounded more intentional than random, not something i am likely to encounter while traveling there. that happens everywhere in the U.S., even near my hometown.

so how do you sort it out? where do you find your safe zone? in your weapons? in your mindset? by staying home? (i can promise you that isn't always safe.)

some links here regarding state department warnings.

this guys blog is very interesting reading.


i would love to hear your thoughts on this. especially why we heard so little about this RV couple that was killed, right here on our own soil.

kate

monday morning

went out early this morning to shoot a little. what a gorgeous day! didn't sleep much last night, but the air and the cold and the sun made me feel wonderful. i brought a blanket so we can catch a nap when we hike out to our spot back in the woods. i don't have a quiver for my arrows, so i parked them in the stationary quiver at the archery range, but i don't shoot this far away......this is where the big boys with the compound bows shoot from.....so i figured out that a mukluk makes a fine place to park your arrows while you are shooting up close :-) i had one bulls-eye, and only one arrow missed the target, so i'm happy with that.

this is back in the woods, in our favorite spot. if you follow a path back from the dirt road, it opens up into a huge field surrounded by forest. mutt will usually go crazy running, but not today, as much. i forgot the paw balm again, and he's got compacted snow between his toes. he chews it out, then runs awhile, then stops to chew it out again. it makes for a mellow morning, these moments of stillness.

sleeping on snow is the best. the sun has given the snow a texture that mimics memory foam.... not too crunchy, not too soft.....and it molds to my body beneath the wool blanket. i drift in and out, warmed by the sun. i want to stay here, and never go back.

a helicopter approaches. the sun is in my eyes, and i can't see who it is. we are in the flight path between two trauma centers, and lifeflight goes over alot. but it could be the staties, or a news chopper. i realize that it might look a teeny bit odd, someone lying in the middle of a field in the snow. so i get up, and head toward the woods. i don't wave or anything, so as to avoid inadvertently signaling that i need assistance. i feel strangely violated, like my secret place has been revealed..... mutt is glad to be on the move.

a friend, who i have never met in person, wrote a poem describing what they thought my woods walks must be like. it was such an accurate picture of this special place that it gave me a shiver. a nice shiver, i mean, to think that somehow my writing reflects my surroundings so well. or maybe he is just super intuitive, which is more likely the case.....either way, thank-you.....

another sort of weapon

i gotta have surgery in less than 3 weeks. that doesn't give me much time, and screws up all my spring plans. i have a ton of stuff to do beforehand....like spring cleaning the farmhouse, moving the last of the wood into the house, and making any changes to the rondyvan that involve lifting or straining.

i am calm enough about this now. but the last few days i've been evaluating what i do on a given day, to determine if i can do it after "major abdominal surgery". i don't think the surgery is really that major, but i think the doc is telling me that because i don't want to stay overnight in the hospital, and he figures i'll sign out AMA if he doesn't frighten me.

he's trying to frighten the wrong cowgirl.

scary was last year after throat surgery, when they sent me home a couple hours after surgery with a neck and throat too swollen to swallow my spit, let alone stay hydrated on a 100 degree day. i had the same surgery that some of my patients in icu had, except they had emergency tracheostomy trays at their bedsides. i love the health care system.

anyhow, i have determined that most of the things i do involve lifting, or other things that increase intra-abdominal pressure. chopping and carrying wood is out. so is hiking alone in the woods. no swords or longbows. gad, it's gonna be a long 6-8 weeks.

so, i made a list of stuff to get done. first on the list was camping :-) i got to fool around with my longbow some. i've never shot it in temps this cold. felt funny, like the draw was heavier, but i got some decent shots out of it. i definitely need a new string.

i posted a couple pics of my bow..... a sinew-backed hickory longbow. it's 59 1/2" long, with a draw length of 28" and a supposed draw weight of 38#. last year at rendezvous i attended some of the archery seminars, and was told the weight is alot heavier than 38#, which means it's likely legal for hunting, should i ever need to use it for that. when i got impatient waiting for the guy to ship me the bow, i called him, and he said "it takes alot of time to chew that much sinew"!!!! i knew i was getting a traditional bow, but this guy went all the way. i really love it.

so anyhow, i decided to stay home tonight and clean. get the chores out of the way as soon as possible, then i can play in what time is left. that, and plan my post-op exit strategy......

changes

screw blogger. i want to load a cool picture, and it won't let me. so i know i'm just not meant to have that picture, this minute, in this post. still aggravating. a little. :-)

a lot is going on right now in my life. i started iaido classes last week, and am really loving it. i wanted to take it for years, but didn't think chicks did it. well, half my class and one of my instructors are women. being in a room half full of women with swords is an empowering experience. i feel like i've come home.

over the last few months, i've been trying to build my upper body strength. chopping wood helps, and carrying it, and stacking it. i used to lift weights for awhile, and could bench my weight, which i guess is a good thing. but i'm not too big on "organized" exercise now. hiking and hoeing and working with wood seemed like good enough for me.

heh. was i wrong. in class on saturday, we had a different teacher named mike (i seem to have an overabundance of mike's in my life). we were doing cuts with the swords and he says "stop swinging like your chopping wood.....you're swordsmen, not axe muderers." well, so much for me, miss-heft-it-high-and-slam-it-down-kate. i've got a lot to relearn.

then there is the part where we kneel on the floor long enough for both legs to go to sleep, then leap nimbly to our feet and perform smooth movements with the sword. yeah. karen taught me a couple exercises to do over the next few weeks. don't worry, she says, your thighs will be like iron in no time. heh. they haven't stopped quivering since saturday.

tomorrow i start guitar lessons. i found an instructor who doesn't teach out of a book. i am self-taught, so i have an odd assortment of things i want to learn. like, tara asked me what key i was playing "angel" in. i had no idea. i know chords, but not much musical stuff. so greg is gonna teach me keys, and some other basics. me and tara, we're gonna jam :-)

i also hope, once and for all, to learn how to tune my B string.

so that's what's new in my life. mutt and i are out alot more, hiking hills and tromping through snow. i am knitting tara's socks as fast as i can. there are books to read and songs to sing and wool to spin. doctors to disagee with, and procedures to decide on. and always a rondyvan in constant need of tweaking. it is good to be out of my recent slump.

which brings me to my love/hate relationship with the internet. i get pulled to it in fits and starts. i'm feeling pulled away right now, and feeling a need to focus down more. but i am really loving my blog, and some of the friendships i've made. like, i am hooked on my daily dose of johnny's quotes :-)

so i am backing off a bit, taking a little time to regroup. i won't be doing much emailing for awhile. i will be blogging, i just don't know how often. so if i don't respond to emails right off, be patient. check in here every couple days, i have alot more stories to tell.

katie get your gun

in the summer, i sleep in the van most every night. i may only park across the dirt road from the house, or up on the hill but you'll rarely find me sleeping in the house. it's that "first thing you see" thing i wrote about in an earlier post.

one morning i woke up just after sunrise. i threw on jeans and jumped out of the van to throw a stick for mutt. he was really wound up, giving these snarly growls when he would capture the stick each time.

in the field, a pheasant called out a warning. it doesn't take much to distract us......we immediately started in the direction of the sound, curious. we flushed the bird, and then followed it's flight for a little ways. as usually happens, we got lured farther away from home and into the woods. only i'm not usually in my jammy's with a pair of jeans thrown over them. and barefoot to boot.

just inside the treeline, there is a sound in the brush, and mutt bolts into a stand of pines. he starts to bark, a high pitched bark i was not familiar with, and cannot understand. i call him, and he does not respond. i am pissed. i can't go into the thicket in bare feet without major pain, and the only thing i care about is getting to him and reinforcing the recall command.

then a grunting starts, loud and terrifying. we have had nuisance bears around, and my mind flashes to the fact that i am standing here, barely clothed, without a single thing to to protect us. mutt's barking becomes more strident......

i abandon my dog. i don't do the hero thing, which i like to fantasize i would do when i am daydreaming in my hot van on a summer day. instead, i stop calling my dog, afraid what may follow him if he came. i don't dash barefoot into the brambles to save him. i turn, and run back to my brothers for a gun.

it's only a few minutes until keith and i are back at the woods. the barking and grunting continues. but now, armed with smith and wesson courage, i call mutt again, and he comes out of the trees with blood on his head and muzzle. nothing follows. while i check mutt for injuries, keith ventures off the path. in a clearing a little ways away, he finds a downed deer with a large, necrotic wound on it's flank. it resumes that frantic grunting, suprisingly loud and harsh, in it's fear.

the deer has been down awhile. it is starving, and has lost most of it's hair. it is impossible to tell the age or origin of it's wound....possibly a bullet, or an encounter with a car. despite all of this, it is desperate to live. i look away while keith does the merciful thing......it's spirit survives the echo of the gunshot.

i didn't like guns much. i had hunted years before, a good shot with a .22, but reluctant to interrupt the joy of squirrels. i recognize the usefullness of guns as tools, and had considered them for self-protection many times. i don't know if i would have gone into that thicket if i had had a knife, but i knew i would not have hesitated if i had had a gun.

my mind was made up. i re-took a hunter safety course, and started to practice with the rifle my brothers gave me. i studied calibers and ammo and everything i could to master my discomfort. one day, my brother set up a target to practice with his new glock. he dared me to take a couple shots at the target, showed me how to hold it, and stood back. i put the first three bullets in a two inch cluster, and i was hooked.

it took awhile for me to settle on a gun. i wanted something small and light enough for daily carry, but with the stopping power i needed. i had been the victim of a violent assault once, and wanted a gun that would even the playing field whether i was defending my life in my van, or my dog from a bear. i wanted something reliable and unlikely to jam. i got a sweet little 7 shot .357 revolver by taurus.

aside from abandoning my dog to an unknown wild animal, i consider my self pretty brave. not fearless, by any means. i get scared alot. but i've learned to walk through most of the things i fear. i had to, in order to live.

i don't know that i am less fearful carrying a gun. my first line of defense remains an acute awareness of my surroundings, and sharp intuition. but i move through my days and my dark nights with more confidence. i am not operating in fight-or-flight mode any more. it feels good.

twokniveskatie Part 1

i have always loved tools. tools for building, tools for fixing. tools for growing food, and for hunting it . for tilling the land and making cloth and healing broken bodies. for making fire and music and food. and tools for making tools.

at some point, a fascination for sharp things was born. i picked up a throwing knife that fit my hand with perfect weight and balance. although i held it in my hand, i felt it's weight in my belly, down deep where primitive things are born. it connected with my feral side.....i was hooked.

when you think about it, a knife is a tool that can be used for most of the tasks mentioned above. if i had to choose one thing to be stranded with, it would be a knife. you can make shelter, get food, and protect yourself.

the pictures above are two favorites. the cold steel bushman and the gerber backpacking axe. the bushman is a workhorse with many uses. it has a hollow handle, and can be made a spear. (watch out, boys). it is most always next to me.

above are some of my favorites smaller knives. lower left is one made from a trap spring. it is probably the sharpest knife i own. center is a braintanned quilled sheath whose flint knife is no longer with me. i love the sheath, and wait for a knife to fit it. next are a patch knife and a mini skean du, great little neck knives. and last a turquoise inlaid folder gifted me by friends.

these are just a few of my knives.....a prudent girl never shows all the aces up her sleeve, nor the sharp things in her boot. which leads to the next part of the story.

a group of friends who camped rendezvous together were gathered for a thanksgiving meal at a friends house. now buckskinners do love their weapons, so my buddy Hish and i were comparing ours on the table. i didn't care for guns at the time, so i had out my knife to compare to his pistol. he was extolling the virtues of his gun and my obvious disadvantage, when he grabbed my knife off the table and made pretend to draw on me with the gun. i had the second knife out of my boot and at his crotch so fast i amazed even myself, and some very impressed onlookers. i got to carve the turkey that day, and Hish said it was one of the most erotic things that ever happened to him. (next to his wife Bonnie, of course). which speaks volumes about the nature of my friends :)

so was the beginning of the legend. there is more to come, including a pirate with ill-intentions, and a man with a voice that won my heart. but that's part 2.