On veteran's day

“Honor to the soldier and sailor everywhere, who bravely bears his country's cause. Honor, also, to the citizen who cares for his brother in the field and serves, as he best can, the same cause.” 

 - Abraham Lincoln.

For some time I carried this weight.  Despite my six years in the US Department of Defense, working three months in Iraq in 2007, being one of the few women who wore civilian clothing - although we were given the option of wearing desert cammos that read "DoD Civilian" and then another couple years actually considered a US Army Civilian, and in both instances, carrying around an official identity card declaring me as accompanying the Armed Forces and subject to Geneva Conventions - I don't feel worthy of the title or honor of being called a veteran. 

 International Zone, Baghdad 2007

Sure I went to the same training as many of uniformed colleagues before I was shipped on the same military aircraft to the same desert destinations. Sure I cried when I thought about my uniformed friends who I could not save ... who died for this country, or those who had to leave their families behind (just as I was leaving mine behind), for service. When my unit went to a sponsored day of gratitude to the Armed Forces at Busch Gardens, I felt like a freeloader. 

Yes after six years of service I walked away, not sure what those six years had given me, and not sure what they would contribute to my future. 

In any case, I always feel immense pride at having served alongside my brave, self-less, uniformed brethren. Even for the short-term I did, usually behind multiple lines of defense if and when I was overseas with them. Every time Veterans Day comes around - I struggle with this mix of pride, shame, and egoism. I recognize all my friends who wore the uniform - and certainly I could have taken up the uniform; I also wonder how many other civilians like me, who served in the rear to support our troops or worked alongside them, feel the same way I do. 

I honor all our country's veterans, those in uniform, in the past, present, and future, and those who served alongside those in uniform to support our country's cause.

Re-capping 2010

This was an old post that when I went to publish, blogger crapped out on me:

Besides turning 30 what did I do was notable? Somethings I've posted about already, and I'm thinking about my 'never' list but I'm too lazy to find it and scan it ... maybe an idea for something else I can look up.

January - I remember I was living in Ballston fooling myself into thinking I could continue working for DoD. I probably went on some ice climbing trips. I also mourned the loss of my colleague in Afghanistan. I learned my aunt had breast cancer.

February - Probably more ice climbing trips. Took my first avalanche awareness course.

March - Took my second avalanche course and skied in Colorado for the first time. Crested Butte. Discovered powder. Became insanely jealous of my avalanche comrades who were outfitted in skis while I tromped clumsily around Rocky Mountain National Park in my snowshoes. Snuck in a rockclimbing trip to the Gunks.

April - Moved back to D.C. after realizing I was never going to adapt to living in Arlington. Started appreciating spring time in the city, trained for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer by walking everywhere, 5 to 10 miles a day. Attended DC filmfest fiendishly.

May - Walked a marathon length one day, and a half marathon length the second day. Hardest thing I have ever done. My feet felt like raw pulverized ground meat for a week. Continued training. Went on a date with the first climber to become my boyfriend in six years.



June - Left for Tanzania. Wowed by wildlife in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro crater. Got followed around by a toad in our camp, witnessed wild cheetahs nearby and giraffes in the parking lot. Scared off by lions in the ladies room. Summited Mt. Kilimanjaro, my first and probably only Seven Summit.

July - Said goodbye to a dear friend after his quick spirited and calm acceptance with a terminal illness. Climbed my first of the 50 Classic Climbs of North America - the Petit Grepon on my return visit to Rocky Mountain National Park. Notably this was date # 6 with my ex-boyfriend to be and my first successful alpine route. Another post warrants on date # 6. I also quit my cushy federal job, missed my flight back to DC and instead visited friends in Seattle and San Diego for another 10 days.

August - I returned just in time from my adventures out west to go on date #10 to Chamonix, France. There I didn't climb anything of consequence but had a great time with friends, ate yummy food, dealt with my nagging independence in the face of a looming relationship, and soaked in beautiful views of the French Alps.

September - More home bound than planned due to an recurring illness. Got to be around one of my best friends and witness her become a mother to two children. Eventually got back to San Diego to climb. Climbed my second alpine route in Teton National Park, although not a 50 classic, I thought a better climb than the Petit Grepon.

October- My favorite climbing season, discovered the Red River Gorge in Kentucky, went to an old favorite, the New River Gorge in West Virginia. Took off for a cross-country road-trip.

November - Drove to Joshua Tree, CA and back. On the way saw an old friend and made new ones. Definitely pushed my climbing further than I ever have before. Returned in time for the holidays.

December - Christmas Day ice climbing, worked outdoor recreation equipment and clothing retail, got my first big scare on a lead climb in the Dacks. The same one I got a bloody nose on earlier in the year in January. Realized I was soloing a 350' slush cone of a waterfall ice climb and experienced near anchor failure (would've been catastrophic had it actually happened).
Worked New Year's Eve after driving back from that trip during the night before, and opened my eyes just enough to see fireworks over Baltimore harbor.

mood on write

I write based on my mood. I also write based on what my fellow bloggers are writing. Travel, adventure, climbing etc. A few posts ago I alluded to being in Jordan like being in prison. But a few weeks ago I found the keys to the garden. Literally. I put the keys on a chain that opened the living room security bar doors, to the very not-desert like lushness of a backyard I rarely use yet the gardener every day dutifully waters and trims once a week. It has a sprucy evergreen in the center, with a few miniature pines that look like they came from Tuscany, and a few small red blossoms trimmed along a serpentine edge of more ever green low bushes. It is filled with rare and uncharacteristic green grass. I found the small key that unlocks the suggestion of a gate between the garden and the street. As I write now, I hear the call to evening prayer, it echoes through the city, haunting, sometimes rude when it occurs at 4 AM.

In the past week, I discovered the Amman climbing scene. A friend from language school last summer introduced me over e-mail to another American,

"you two are nice intelligent women who both told me you brought two suitcases to the Middle East, one filled with climbing equipment."

We've already spent three weekends together. It was this past week that we found one Jordanian, Hakim, going against the grain of his family and culture to cultivate climbing, seen by some Jordanians as an intrusive Western past-time. We praised the routes he opened in the hills up north, he showed us an amazing limestone blue streaked gorge in a small Christian village he started developing two years ago after interviewing locals. They first took him to a cement quarry. His biggest crux to developing routes is getting a battery-powered percussion drill and getting equipment for his burgeoning adventure tourism business.

My climbing partner and I were really excited about Hakim and Jordan's possibilities. One thing stood out about Hakim. He wanted to have Jordanians open routes in their own country. Even though he and other rockclimbing guides further south in Wadi Rum were mentored by European climbers like Tony Howard, and Wilfred, a French climber, it was important for him to name the routes in Arabic, and the first ascensionist to be of Arab origin. Similiarly, Mohammad Hammad in Wadi Rum, known as probably the most skillful climbing guide (and Hakim grudgingly admits too) in the preserve completed many first ascents in the scary soft red sandstone towers. He spoke to me of how the Bedouin mistrust the ropes and how there is resentment towards a French climber who was writing a guidebook and renamed many of the routes in French or English and claimed his own F.A., even though Mohammad and others had done those routes before.

A few weeks ago through the heat and thirst of Ramadan (the Muslim holy month of fasting) in the desert, Mohammad invited us to his house in the village, insisted on us drinking hot tea for strength and fortitude before our day of climbing began, and despite needing rest, drove us himself to the our climbing destination and several hours later sent his younger brother to pick us up. While he readied to bring food to a group of campers and fix a leaky water tank without having any food or water himself, Mohammad also took the time to drop us at a granite sport crag. In thanks, I gave him four Black Diamond Camalots, sizes 2-0.5. He told me that nothing he did prior were worth the Camalots. I disagree, last year in the winter he bailed my friend and I off a climb when we were one rope short of a rappel and then took me climbing for a full day and treated me to camp, Bedouin-style.

Jordan finally feels like it's giving me a way back to myself. And here I am leaving it in a matter of moments ...

almost out

An addendum to the previous post. First, I did experience a climber death in my own close knit community in Washington D.C. I had only climbed with him one day. As I know many climber's by his first name, it was not until I heard the details of his accident, that it was his New Zealand fiancee who was belaying him and witnessed his accident that I remembered. I read from afar the grief of my friends in our community and I too was saddened. And I understood what a terrible summer had passed. The morning I realized, I was also driving a group of friends later to Wadi Mujib, a slot canyon that fed into the Dead Sea. I was trying to remain jovial with the mood of the morning, but I had to blurt out how I felt and the car quieted. They weren't climbers, I don't think they understood it, and such a death to an outsider could only have a negative explanation. I thank them for their silence.

catching up from the other side

I've finally had a chance to sit down and surf the net. From social networking sites I learn how negligent I've been ... dog deaths and lots and lots of climber deaths. I'm heart stricken for one of my climbing heroes, Majka, who once driving back from an ice climbing clinic informally interviewed me on being a lady single climber as I unwittingly answered and she smiled and nodded her head knowingly ... as my responses proved her hypotheses.

She wrote on how deaths of climbers are getting closer to her and I thought yes. I also think about the social commentary one of the proprietors of Rock and Snow in New Paltz said as he introduced one of the oldest climbing documentary films on climbing The Nose (how wild, drinking water out of bleacher jugs, and using pitons and eating utensil ... those were some hard men). He claimed corporate America was taking away the sense of community, that it sought to replace the sense of community with happy hours and family picnics, and long hours at the office fueled by a guilty nagging sense one could not survive if one did not bill 80 hours a week. I partly believe him. Climbing has given me a sense of community back. I think about the friends I've made from Alaska to Texas to South Africa to Jordan. How far that community spans. But having a community also means more people closer to your heart. When we indulge in the ultimate litmus of life's tests on the rock or in the mountains, exuberant in the feeling of having everything move in synch... muscle sinew mind soul ..., it's just as memorable and fleeting as the deepest meditation or daydream. So when we've lost our friends ... its perhaps a reminder of how much richer we've made our lives by being close to them. And the loss of any partner in the passions of same soul of a community ... is probably in equal and measurable parts painful. Although I will caveat, I have not lost a friend who was a climbing partner but I have lost many classmates and former social acquaintances from boating to car accidents, to disease ... but by the time they passed away, we were no longer held by the same bonds of community, and I can't say I felt stricken with grief for them.

the other world

I've told everyone that I'm living in Jordan this year, because really when you are somewhere for eight months out of twelve, your condo is rented, and all your mail is being forwarded to your mom's, where else can you say you lived? I lived out of the trunk of my car, on a friend's couch, a work-paid for hotel room, a tent for two weeks, random assortment of vacation rentals, and random campsites. It's the most stable thing I've done this year, being in a foreign country. And I'm still forced to change my mindset. The only two places I can look-up the weather forecast on the internet is for Amman and Aqaba, or I have to wait for the newspapers to describe the 'hilly areas.' Instead conferring a Time Out website, I have to confer the Jordan Times. When people give directions, they don't list street names, they list traffic circles (1st through 8th, and a few named ones), and describe second rights, third lefts. Although in the last eighteen months smaller residential streets have names and in the last year, buildings have acquired numbers (no more fourth building on the right after the third intersection). A new observable sign that Jordan is joining the rest of the world is a push for recycling, glass and plastic. Internet connection here is not the most reliable and the government can monitor anything. Still on any road trip, you will be pulled over at a random checkpoint to have documents checked, easy enough to do as an American. Movie times are still published in the paper, sales in stores are anybody's guess, and the main way of shopping for any service is through 'word of mouth.'