Signs for the Seriously Stuck on Stupid

I’ve done some stupid things in my life.  I would like to say I’m the first to admit that, but I think others beat me to it, and they were talking about me.

I frequently failed to learn from the stupid things I’ve done in my life.  I was not the first to admit that either.

Here’s one of the stupid things I’ve done:

This was in 1973.  I was 32, certainly old enough to know better.  I’m at the gas station in Girdwood, waiting to begin a long odyssey down the Alcan Highway through Canada to Outside (the lower 48 states).  Yes, that’s an overloaded 1965 Mustang pulling an enormously overloaded trailer.

I stopped in Anchorage to say bye to my folks.  My mother was aghast.  My father laughed and shook his head.

I had to get towed up steep hills in the Alcan.  I almost burned out the clutch.  I barely made it to Oregon where I swapped the Mustang for a GMC pickup and my cousin transferred the box to the pickup.  All went well after that.

The moral of this anecdote is that it’s a good thing I didn’t know any better, because I never would have gone on that adventure.

Now I’m going off on another stupid adventure, but this time I know in advance it’s stupid.  Unless I change my mind, I’m catching a ride to Hope Thursday morning so I can hike the Resurrection Trail.  Attempt.  Attempt to hike the trail.

Every part of me but my feet is capable of this hike. Also my left shoulder.  And perhaps my right ring finger....and the right shoulder.  Maybe the right ankle, too.

I got the idea last Thursday when my friend Irene posted on Facebook that she and her three young children had hiked the trail over the Fourth of July holiday. 

By Friday night I had disabused myself of the idea.  I’d just walked three miles picking up litter and my feet hurt.  Stupid, I told myself, to think I can still walk 35 miles with a heavy pack.  I’d hiked it forty-plus years ago and since then did part of it by dog team and again on a snowmachine.  It isn’t new territory for me.

Sign:  a discernible indication of what is not itself directly perceptible.

Monday morning I received a sign.  My backpack, which had been hanging on a hook in the garage since May of last year, had fallen to the floor.  Obviously, it wanted to go hiking.

The backpack with its raincoat on the floor.

All right!  Nothing like a sign to help make up my mind.  Preparations began.  No problem with bears, I figured.  They’ll all be in Cooper Landing looking for salmon at the Russian River.

Monday, thinking I could save myself a trip to Seward, I went online to look for trail information.  When I Googled Resurrection Trail, up popped this link:

http://juneauempire.com/stories/071110/sta_674741119.shtml

Okaaaaay, a year to the day.  Bear attack. 

Was that a sign?  Perhaps an ominous omen?  I got to thinking about that backpack falling to the floor after more than a year. 

Omen:  an occurrence or phenomenon believed to portend a future event.

Does the backpack really want to go?  Or is it telling me I’m gonna fall flat on my face for whatever  reason? 

Like, a fetal position to protect from a charging bear?

What do you think?  Is this a backpack that wants to go, or a backpack in the fetal position?

Identity Crisis as the World Turns

Feeling a little off-kilter these days?  Maybe feel like yelling, “Stop the world!  I want to get off!”

Can’t help you there.  In fact, it gets even worse.

When I first saw Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 psychological masterpiece Vertigo, I’d never before heard the word.   Then with all the action in towers and such, I thought it meant a fear of heights.  I was wrong; that fear is called acrophobia.

Many years after seeing that movie, I found out first hand that vertigo actually is a feeling of dizziness, usually caused by a movement or a visual change in perspective.  Sometimes it can be brought on by looking down from a height, hence the misunderstanding. 

I’ve never been afraid of heights, and that’s a good thing for a tomboy who spent half her childhood in trees.  Ladders, roofs, cliffs—none of it bothers me. 

The only time I got uneasy about heights I was snorkeling in about fifteen feet of water in Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii, the place where Capt. James Cook was invited for dinner--as the entree.  A short distance from shore the sea floor dropped almost vertically more than a hundred feet.  It took some major mind-bending before I could swim out over that precipice.  That same day I donned SCUBA gear and descended to a small bed of sand at minus 105 feet.

But, back to vertigo.  That’s the sensation of dizziness, like everything around you is spinning but you aren’t.  It’s very disconcerting.

But, in truth, you are, you know.  Spinning.

Not only is the earth spinning its catawampus way around the sun so that we up here in the sub Arctic get our share of the sun for a few months, it’s also wobbling.  If that’s not enough to make you toss your cookies, what I’m going to tell you next certainly should.

Ever since I first heard about astrology, I’ve believed I was a Sagittarian.  I’m supposed to be playful, loyal, and devoted to my lover(s—plural, mind you!), and should seek intellectual, gentile mates.  My career choices should be travel agent, photographer, explorer, and so on.  I don’t mince words.  Plus, I love to spend money and don’t fret too much about where the next buck is coming from.

We Sagittarians are procrastinators (yes), playful (yep), don’t mince words (unfortunately), and in the boudoir are…   are…   Oh, never mind. 

So far, so good.

Now I find out that because the earth has been wobbling around, it’s no longer in the same place it was 3000 years ago when the astrological charts were devised. 

Now, for Pisces’s sakes, I find out I’m actually a Scorpio.  No wonder I couldn’t stay at the same job longer than three years.  I was supposed to have been a doctor, scientist, police officer, or psychologist.  Are you kidding me?  I bailed out of Psych 101 as fast as I could.  They were speaking a foreign language there.

Scorpio

Plus, I’m supposed to have strong management skills (NOT), and be disciplined enough to stick to a budget (NOT).  And, I should have a controlled, cool exterior, and not show emotions.  OMG.  Stop the world, I want to get off.  I AM a Sagittarius.  My emotions are not only on my sleeve, they are scattered around me like Hansel and Gretel sowing their bread crumbs.

So, if you’re feeling like your wobbling on your axis, you might want to Google the new astrological calendar and find out who you were really supposed to be.

There’s hope, though, because some claim the “the new astrological calendar is irrelevant to western astrology which uses the Tropical Zodiac, which is not constellation based, as opposed to eastern astrology which uses the Sidereal Zodiac, which is constellation based …and…what the new calendar is based upon.” 

That new calendar’s thrown in another sign of the Zodiac, too, called Ophuchicus.  I can’t even pronounce it.

Me?  I’ll stick with Sagittarius.  It says I’m a tomboy and that is so right on I’ll believe anything else.