Boy Scout Beach

I've convinced myself that, although some people tell me that in order to get good at writing fiction I need to practice, I really should never write fiction again. I'm not very proud of my last two blog posts; any fiction I seem to produce seems devastatingly hokey to me.

However, I still want to practice story-writing. So I guess I'll try writing stories that actually happened. Wish me luck.


Last summer, I and 19 other women on Juneau Summer Project headed out to Boy Scout Beach to camp. Technically we were backpacking, because we had to hike a mile to the site with our food, tents, etc. loaded onto our backs. This short hike covered a wide range of gorgeous terrains (as many hikes in Juneau do): forest, open field, marsh, beach. The beach was beautiful; the water stretched out almost as far as the eye could see, but was cut off by snow-capped mountains lining the horizon. The beach was soft with sand and stopped abruptly with a field of tall grass.

I occupied myself with building the fire while the other girls set up the tents and galavanted in the rising tide. The fire was of minor importance, as we had already eaten dinner and the weather was relatively warm, but I had a trick I wanted to share with the ladies that Elizabeth had shown us the previous summer: fire breathing.

It was pretty simple: crumple up a piece of newspaper, shove it onto the end of a stick, light it on fire, fill your mouth with corn starch, and blow the corn starch into the blazing newspaper. The result can be pretty impressive when done well, as all the little corn starch pieces catch fire and spread out in the air like a blow torch. I was the first to demonstrate, and the problem I found was that if you don't blow out the corn starch almost immediately after putting it in your mouth, your saliva moistens it and it doesn't want to be blown. Nevertheless, we amused ourselves with this trick for a good ten minutes.

The tide was rising quickly and it was getting dark (not because the sun was really going to go very far below the horizon, but because it was cloudy). I went out into the water with one of the ladies and timed it as the water level traveled about ten meters in a minute. We couldn't really see a line in the sand where we anticipated the water level would stop. We were camping high on the sand close to the grass, which was too tall to camp in. Behind the grass a ways was the beginning of a pine forest with a clean floor where theoretically we could have camped, but we wouldn't have felt it fair to say we had camped on the beach in that case.

We went to bed kind of late, about 11:00 p.m., and fell asleep without a plan regarding what would happen if the tide got too high. We reasoned that we had camped on this beach the previous summer, when the tide had risen at about the same time of day, and hadn't had any issues with the water level getting too high, so why should it be a problem this year?

I awoke at about 1:00 a.m. to the sound of Lexi's voice hissing my name from outside my tent. I had been in deep sleep and was pretty groggy when she explained to me that she had set a frisbee on the sand about ten feet in front of the tents, and that she had stayed up watching the water level with the plan that if the water reached the frisbee, she would wake me up for collaboration. I started coming to; it was decision time. Do we wake the girls up and move our tents to the forest area? Do we wake the girls up and leave altogether? Do we do nothing and risk getting everything, including ourselves, pretty soggy?

We decided to leave. It wasn't worth the risk, and if we were going to have to pack up and go, we might as well go all the way home rather than try to set everything back up elsewhere in the middle of the night just to say we had camped through the night.

We woke the ladies up and everyone sprung into action. Impressively, we were all packed up and ready to go within ten minutes. The water had risen almost to where our tents had been, and we determined we had made the right choice. While everyone was folding tents, gathering bear bags, and packing their packs, I was handed the can of bear spray and told that I was in charge of warding off bears during our mile hike back to the cars. After I packed my bag and everyone was still bustling around me, I sat there studying the instructions on the can with the light from my headlamp trying to figure out how to operate it.

I led the group on the hike out. The trail had flooded as it had started drizzling during the night, and of course it was dark. I marched through the tall grass beside the trail, trying to avoid the flooding, with 19 women parading behind me. We sang songs and tried to be cheerful. I saw dozens of frogs as we hiked, who seemed to be delighting in the puddles. I warned people of them so that they wouldn't get stepped on. Meanwhile, I was armed and ready with bear spray, on the lookout for a furry midnight attacker.

What relief when we reached the cars! We arrived back on campus at 2:00 a.m., dropped our gear, and fell into bed.

Was our camping trip an utter failure? Yes. Was it worth it? Definitely. Sometimes failing brings out more of the adventurer in you than succeeding. All 20 of us have a story to tell now.


God bless.

Letter #2: Child to President

You may or may not have noticed that while my blog is more or less a place for me to experiment with writing, I almost never publish any sort of fiction.

I would like to wade into the world of fiction by practicing something that I hope will be easy: fictional letters.

Please allow me to experiment as I try this out. Please feel free to comment below with comments or suggestions. My plan is to create two new people each time; a letter-writer and a letter-receiver, both of which you will hopefully learn a little bit about.

I have no idea how this will go, so again, your comments and suggestions are not only welcome, but I ask them of you.


Dear Mr. President,

I listened to your speech last night and I think you did a good job. Your wife is very good at ironing your shirts. Mom said you were giving a "message of hope," and Daddy said that means you're telling our country that it will all be okay.

I'm not worried, though. I know that bombs and war are bad but things always get better. My brother is a soldier in the army and he says all his friends are very brave.

Guess what. Someday I want to be President of the United States of America too. And I will always give messages of hope to people who are sad or scared.

My friend Katie said if she were president she would make sure all the orphans would have mommies and daddies to adopt them. And Doug said if he were president he would make sure everyone had ice cream every day for free but I told him that was stupid because some people are lactose-intolerant.

Anyway I have to go feed my dog, Rocket now. He's a golden retriever.

Love, 
Teagan 

Letter #1: Woman to ex-lover

You may or may not have noticed that while my blog is more or less a place for me to experiment with writing, I almost never publish any sort of fiction.

I would like to wade into the world of fiction by practicing something that I hope will be easy: fictional letters.

Please allow me to experiment as I try this out. Please feel free to comment below with comments or suggestions. My plan is to create two new people each time; a letter-writer and a letter-receiver, both of which you will hopefully learn a little bit about.

I have no idea how this will go, so again, your comments and suggestions are not only welcome, but I ask them of you.


Nate-
I don't know if I'm going to send this letter yet or not. Part of me just wants to vent, but the other part can't help but be -kind of- grateful. You've ruined my life and given me everything. Can you even begin to understand that?

You led me to believe things about you that simply aren't true: your trustworthiness, your faithfulness. You didn't bail when things got a little difficult, like when I got the flu and couldn't come to your parents', or when we got in that fight when you came home stinking of booze and weed. We always seemed to make it work somehow. We always said sorry and we always did our parts to fix things. But I guess Mallory was too much for you.

You didn't just leave. You disappeared. I came home from a twelve-hour shift to find the apartment half-empty. No note. Nothing. I found out from a mutual friend that you had moved to Chicago. What? I mean, WHAT?!? Do you realize how heart-breaking that was for me? Do you realize how alone and confused I felt? I am estranged from my parents and friends because of you, and now I'm on my own. I blamed myself for awhile, but it's not my fault. I know it's not my fault.

Eventually I realized that you don't deserve Mallory. I'm glad I finally figured that out.

To be honest, I thought about an abortion. Then I thought about adoption. It was terrible making all those decisions on my own. But if you had stuck around, there wouldn't have been a decision: she would have been ours. The thought of raising her on my own absolutely terrified me. I work full-time and don't make much money. I'm paying rent by myself now. I can barely keep my own life together, let alone take care of someone else's. Why would you put my through this? You perceived the "freedom" to take this situation or leave it, but I never had that freedom. I don't have a choice but to deal with this.

I wonder if you miss me. If you ever wish this had never happened so that we could still be together. Are you happy?

I can't say motherhood isn't kicking my butt. I want to scream 98% of the time but I don't because then I will wake up or scare Mallory and that will just make it worse. Financially, I'm barely scraping by. I still don't have friends or my parents. I lost my freedom. But maybe it was lost all along, from the day I met you.

BUT. Listen to me, Nate. I am so happy to have Mallory. She is my world and my heart beats for her in a way that it never did for you. When I feel like completely giving up, her precious toothless smile brings all meaning back to my life. I live for her. And you would, too, if you would just catch one glimpse of her beautiful blue eyes or her tiny, tiny fingers. I'd send a picture, but you don't deserve that. If you really wanted to love her, you could come see her for yourself. You know where we live.

The other day, my coworker, June (remember her? Sweetest person ever.), asked me innocently if motherhood was worth losing you. The question took me aback because I really haven't talked about the situation much at work. It was really a pretty bold question for her to ask, but she's sweet as honey and I know she was being genuine when she asked me that. I asked her what she meant. "Well, maybe that's not what I meant. Maybe I'm asking if being with him was worth it, rather than losing him. I like you, Shelly, but you made some mistakes, I think. It seems like that guy was no good but you dove into the relationship head-first and now you're suffering the consequences. Easy come, easy go. But you were also rewarded for enduring his abandonment: you have a beautiful daughter. Was it worth it?"

Yes, June, it was worth it.

Yes, Nate, it was worth it. Good riddance.

-Shelly