Thank You Gary Paulsen

 

Gary Paulsen  1939-2021

 When did I first pick up a book to read by Gary Paulsen? Did I ever read Hatchet before needing to teach it to my fifth graders, somewhere around 2010? How many of his books HAVE I read, have I taught? I can’t stop thinking about Gary Paulsen this morning. My memory is so poor for dates and event timelines, especially when things happen that I don’t realize are going to be significant someday. I wish there was a way that something could spark in your brain at the time that says, “This. Pay attention to THIS. It will be meaningful for you someday.” I guess that’s just not the way life works though. Thankfully, what’s most important right now is the feeling of permanency, the lasting impact, that Gary Paulsen’s books have had on me since the early 2000’s at least.  I think maybe I came to know of him when my eldest child was in fifth grade and reading Hatchet. I probably read it when he brought it home from school. It’s an amazing book. Not for the story itself. It’s a good story, but not the best I’ve ever read. So many implausible, impossible things passed off as true to life, even though the story is fiction. But what makes the story amazing is that it has, for many generations of kids since its publication in 1986, drawn even the most reluctant reader in, and created a READER out of a non-reader. Closer to my own heart is the fact that I have had a relationship with Gary Paulsen as not only a teacher, but also as an insatiable reader.  His writing talent was not just in children’s literature, but he was a magnificent and amazingly funny adult writer as well. He was also a dog musher!  Briefly, and not in it for the long haul - though I think his heart was - but his timing as a musher just so happened to correspond with the beginning of that passion in my own life. I think that is why I am SO sad over his death today. It affects me on so many different levels, all of which are things I hold close to my heart.

     In 2004 or 5, I taught the books Stone Fox and Balto for the first time to my 4^th graders. In doing research for these books, I discovered the Iditarod, which turned into a lifelong passion for all things dog, and Alaska, for me. Prior to that time, I don’t believe I had ever heard of it, and the timing of everything that year was nothing if not serendipitous. I’m sure it is probably when I discovered Gary’s adult book Winterdance, subtitled The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod.  It remains, to this day, one of my all-time favorite books. It is also a book I will never forget reading for the first time. I remember reading it in bed before sleep, in the dark with a book light, and laughing out loud at various parts, literally guffawing and trying so hard not to wake my sleeping husband. The stand-out pieces of humor I specifically recall (despite my poor recall of most things I read) is his description of trying to train his dogs on a bicycle, his encounter with skunks (and his wife’s response of making him sleep in the kennel with the dogs, upon his return), and his sleep-deprived experience with glowing green phosphorescent tree trunks on a wooded trail during an overnight training run. I don’t think that was the first Gary Paulsen book I ever read, but it was certainly the best, and my first realization of what a gifted writer he was, especially with his crafted use of side-splitting humor, at his own expense.  I also recall trying to share those humorous parts with said sleeping husband, once awake, and not being able to read them without laughing myself to tears. Somehow, we did not share the same sense of humor that night in the dark. I still just love that book.

      I was actually lucky enough to attend both the summer Iditarod Education Conference in Anchorage in June of 2005, and the winter conference in February/March, 2006, just before the actual Iditarod. Gary was a speaker at one of those conferences, and posed for pictures afterwards. I bought another copy of Winterdance and had it inscribed for my outdoor-loving brother, who had come to Alaska with me the first time I went. I no longer have a copy of that photo, lost to computer that died with no back up available, but the image of the moment itself is burned into my memory bank.  I recall Gary, seated at the table outside the conference room at the Millenium Hotel in Anchorage, signing copies, and I stood behind him, and someone snapped a picture of that moment. That’s a gift of a memory to keep. I don’t have a lot of heroes, I don’t really have time for much in the way of hero-worship, but I will say Gary Paulsen became one for me. And to have had a photo taken with him, even if I no longer have it to look at, well, that is not something I will forget, even when I forget so much else minutia, daily.  He had run the Iditarod twice, previously, once in 1983, finishing in 41^st place, and again in 1985, scratching (quitting) only 80 miles from the finish. He was running again in 2006, and I was there. I. WAS. THERE. 4^th Avenue and D, Anchorage, Alaska, a million miles (it seemed) from my classroom and my home in western NY, watching a writing genius, musher hero, one whom I had now met IN PERSON, RUN THE IDITAROD. Even the capital letters cannot begin to convey the level of excitement I felt. I have no words to describe how I felt when I heard Gary Paulsen’s name called as number 15, nor how I felt as he and his dogs flew past me on that snow covered street.  The whole event was a top life-time event for me, in large part because of Gary Paulsen.

     Hatchet followed, a few years later. I moved up from teaching 4^th grade, to teaching 5^th and 6^th. Hatchet was, I was happy to be reminded, a staple for 5^th grade reading.  Realizing that this little gem was now mine to introduce as a reading experience to ten- year- olds was another delightful adventure. I don’t remember the first class I taught it to, but I do remember they loved it. As did every subsequent class. Some years, we immediately went on to read the follow-up book, Brian’s Winter.  And every year, there was always at least one kid, often more, almost always boys but some girls too, who claimed they did not like reading, but who then decided Gary Paulsen was an ok writer, and could I please tell them some other books he wrote that they could read? I even had a few kids over the years read all of the “Brian Robeson” books; I think there are five. Once in awhile, I recommended Paulsen’s Guts, or Woodsong, for those very outdoorsy kinds of boys who hated reading but still had to fulfill their monthly independent reading points. They still didn’t love reading, but they got through the books and didn’t hate them. That’s a win, for a teacher, for me. As I was nearing the end of my teaching career, I began to pay more attention to the classic, special books I had been teaching for so many years. It was usually spring when I stood in front of the class and read, “Brian Robeson stared out the window of the small plane at the endless green northern wilderness below” but my final year, I couldn’t wait ‘til spring. The warm fall sunshine of September fell through the large windows of my second floor classroom that year, three years ago now, as I continued, “It was a small plane, a bush plane – a Cessna 406 – and the engine was so loud, so roaring and consuming and loud, that it ruined any chance for conversation.”

     Gary Paulsen. A truly gifted, amazing human being. He had a terrible childhood, one that would wreck most people. Instead, he turned it into a lifetime of experiences for his own writing that reached so many others. He was a world traveler, a musher, a boat builder and sailor, a husband, father, friend. He wrote, with grit, with an identifiable turn of phrase that could ONLY be Gary Paulsen, with humor, with sparse yet stunning description. His writing brough me joy as a reader, and as a teacher. His connection to dogs and mushing for a time set my soul on fire.  I will miss you in this world. I am sad that you are gone from it. We are all the less for your absence, however, we are all the more for having known your presence.  I hope this next life brings you greater adventures, new stories, fresh sharpened pencils with which to write new tales. Continue the dance you began, my friend. You will forever be missed.

Saying "Thank You"

   “Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.” —Voltaire

 I have been thinking a lot lately about how we learn to do the things we know how to do. And, how about much we owe to people who have taught us the skills we have along the way.  One of my kids (well, he's 26, but he's still MY kid) has been doing a lot of repair work for people this summer, on old tractors, bulldozers, etc. and at the same time, working on remodeling his house, while waiting for his last semester of nursing school to begin next week.  While this really isn't anything new for him, the fact that his work is being talked about and his name passed on to others who call him based upon someone else's recommendations, and the fact that he's been in pretty high demand lately is kind of cool. Cool enough, and he's been busy enough, swamped actually, that I have started really thinking about it - how does he know how to DO this stuff? He talks to me about engine repair, and any time he ever talks about anything under the hood of a vehicle, or the inner workings of some machine, my eyes glaze over. I'm not kidding when I say I can barely find the place to check the oil (I never ever do) or replace my own windshield washer fluid (only if I have to, after driving with slush thrown on my windows a time too many). I do not know a carburetor from a spark plug. He does. How? I can think of a few things - yes, he did go to school for diesel mechanics for two years, and I know he learned there. But he already knew a ton before he went. He went to BOCES. I am guessing he learned some there. So formal schooling helps. But before that. When he was a very little kid, and we would all go to the library, my other three borrowed story books, either to read on their own or if they were higher level, for me to read to them. Not my 3rd-born. His favorite book at the library to take out, time and time and time again, as a pretty young kid, definitely beginning when he was too young to even read, was a thick, hardcover book on lawnmower repair. I initially remember telling him no, but eventually gave up. Did he learn things from the detailed diagrams even before he could really read? I don't know but he loved that book. It went to bed with him many nights. And others that were similar, books like How Things Work, and other nonfiction books about cars, etc. He never really did enjoy fiction. Most of all, though, I think the way he learned soooo much of what he knows, and in the best, most enjoyable way possible for him, was from our next door neighbor, Scott.  As my #3 was growing up, he spent most of his time in the next door neighbor's garage, getting his hands (and usually all the rest of him as well) dirty. I don't know what all went on in there, but I imagine that when he was at his youngest, he probably did no more than hand Scott tools he asked for, and messed around. I know that as he grew, Scott did explain things and teach him things. #3 ate it up. The patience of that man was incredible - my kid is not the only kid he has taken under his mechanical wings to teach, by far. He has taught and influenced many, many neighborhood kids, and so many of them have him to thank for their knowledge and learning. I guess he was born with the predisposition for an interest in motorized things, but all of those things, (including also the junkyard our front yard became as he would drag things home to take apart, put back together) contributed to how he can now efficiently and expertly take apart a bulldozer, diagnose it and fix it, or know what is wrong with someone's tractor or swap out engine blocks from one truck to another, or any of the other million things he knows that I don't. He's also incredibly smart at a million other things - not JUST mechanics, but my post really wasn't meant to be about him, per se, rather, about how we learn. 

I was sewing a lot during the initial period of isolation. I made a zillion masks, and my sister made some as well, and we both talked about our mom teaching us to sew. The funny thing is, my mom was not, when I was growing up, a fantabulous seamstress. She could follow a pattern (something that still frustrates me to this day) and she made a few things, nightgowns for Christmas, especially, that I remember, but it's not like she made all her own wardrobe or spent a lot of time at her machine (though my sister may have different memories, since we are 12 years apart in age). But I DO remember her teaching me about the machine, how to thread it, how to use the foot pedal, about tension and fabric thickness, many things that have stayed with me. I also used to spend countless hours at my neighbor's house, learning to hand sew by playing with fabric scraps from garbage bags full upstairs. She would let us use whatever scraps we wanted from those bags to make doll clothes, baby quilts, bean bags, or any other thing we could imagine. And I did take home ec in 7th grade, where poor Mrs. Babbitt, I"m SURE, thought I was a hopeless case after I sewed the two sleeves of my 4 piece shirt (front, back, sleeve, sleeve - NOT HARD, Laurie!) shut, or upside down or whatever they were. I'm SURE I did learn from her, but I think I must have learned far more after that age, in order to still be sewing today. I did also have to watch a few short YouTube videos to address specific problems that arose when I switched machines mid-mask making, so technology has been helpful to learning too?

I raise chickens. THAT was a steep learning curve for me, never having had them growing up. I had NO idea what to do, or what they needed. Everything I needed to know about chickens I learned from a great guy, a friend's dad,  who had his own, and who seemed to enjoy passing along the love of chicken-keeping to me. He EVEN passed along my first chicken and rooster pair!  I read a lot, but mostly, anytime I had questions, I would message him to ask and he would answer, and I would learn. I owe him nearly everything I know about raising chickens. I have a lot of other interests as well - a million of them. I love to bake, and read, and do crafts, and I'm obsessed with dogs and dog care, and I love sled dogs and mushing, and gardening, and canning and art and writing and teaching and and and and......

I LOVE learning new things. I tried (and failed, but WILL try again) sourdough bread baking. I also tried cookie decorating. Wasn't great my first time, but my last-born daughter helped me attempt to learn that .At least enough that I understand the process and would be willing to try again.  I also bought a book that was recommended. I canned dilly beans for the first time (I think they are gross, but #3 loves them, and I had an excess of green beans in the garden, so... why not). I had a mid-canning crisis in terms of what constituted the head of the dill weed I was suppose to use - but... and here's what I guess I'm getting at this whole time - I reached out and asked someone I knew would know the answer to my question. (She's the same one who helped with my foray into sourdough  - and didn't laugh at me when I had a million questions to begin with. Maybe she rolled her eyes, I don't know. She's a couple of miles away from me...)

Everything important, all the MOST IMPORTANT THINGS, I have learned, I have learned from people who have been willing to teach me. I owe a lot of my knowledge, most of it in fact I would bet, to other people. I owe so much to my teachers themselves as I was growing up, and college teachers who helped me learn to write better, art teachers who although they could not pass along their own innate talent, did help me learn about perspective and color choices, friends who have helped along the way in my various journeys and pathways of life.  I have become a better person because of those I have asked for help, and those who have responded. My life is certainly far richer because of all the others who have taught me, and who continue to teach me, along the way. Thank you doesn't seem like much, but it's a start. Who taught you? Where did you learn the things you do best?  I bet we all have a million people to thank for where we are and the skills and joys and abilities we have. 

A Dreamer of Dreams

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
– C.S. Lewis   

I guess I used to think that the dreams you had for your life were static. That "this," "X," is my dream, and that if you were lucky enough to achieve it, that was it, sort of. Like "I achieved my dream! How lucky! End of story."  

I guess I didn't realize that dreams, like life, like people, can be fluid, and move and change and grow, and that, actually, the fact that they do is good. 

I can look back and say it was always a dream to get married, and have 4 or 5 children, and raise a family. I did that. That dream came true. How lucky I am.  I'm not sure I really had many more dreams of doing or being anything after that, for the next 20 years, except being a good mom and a good teacher, a good-enough human being. Raising those 4 kids and teaching full time took up most of the time I might have had for "dreams" but I didn't ever feel like I was missing anything. That all went WITH the dream of being married and raising a family. Living the dream, I guess you could say?

But I can also say that, beginning with an accidental "fall" into the world of sled dogs, and mushing, and Alaska through teaching around fifteen years ago, some parts of that became a big dream of mine.Not a terribly well-defined dream. I can't say I definitely "wanted to be a musher and run the Iditarod." I think I might have thought MAYBE I did.  I definitely thought I wanted to learn to run dogs. And along with that "dream" (obsession?!) developed an unexpected love of Alaska itself. I learned that I loved the dogs, anything at all to do with them, and I loved the mountains, and all the physical attributes of Alaska. The plentiful berry picking, the Sandhill cranes, the fireweed and lupines and Wolfsbane growing tall and wild, the creeks and rocks and hikes and the Magpies and Ravens. Oh Alaska. Still and always in my dreams. Again, the state itself holds some rather undefined dreams still - do I want to move there? Maybe. But then again, no, because my family is here. Would I want to spend more time there? Most definitely. Maybe a dream is to buy a small cabin there where I could go anytime I wanted and was able, any season, for a couple weeks at a time. Anyway, the dog dream, whatever it was - well, I worked hard to make it come true. I spent time there, I volunteered at the Iditarod, I talked to people, I forced myself out of my introverted state and met people, I entered the Teacher on the Trail competition and was a finalist, I read, and still read, any book at all on mushing and Alaska. And the thing about dreams is, I believe that if you want something badly enough, you CAN make it happen. I MADE those connections. And I was able - am able - to spend a lot of time there with dogs. I have helped by kennel sitting a bunch of times (which besides just the responsibility for 20 + dogs at a time requires twice a day feeding, and LOTS of poop scooping, but I enjoy that work, and time spent with the dogs). I was able to be a "handler" at three different Iditarod qualifying races for a friend who DID run the Iditarod. Twice. I actually handled AT the Iditarod twice. I've met every single musher I've wanted to, and then some. I forced myself to talk to my heroes - wouldn't change the discomfort I felt for the end result at all. What I learned about my DREAMS over the course of the last 15 years is that I did not, in fact, want to BE a musher. I do love running a team, and there is nothing quite as soul-soothing and satisfying as being on the back of the runners behind a sled and a team, but - it's hard work. Some of the hardest I have ever encountered. And I'm too lazy. Really. I discovered that about myself once I learned first hand how much work is involved in hooking up a team even for a short run. And to think I would have to do that over and over and over, and so much more if I wanted to camp out or run a long race? Oh heck no. I'd MUCH rather help get someone else ready, and then be home to drink coffee by a fire and sleep in a wood-heated house at night than to be out on the trail in the dark, worried about running into moose, or having to sleep in my sled bag in a sleeping bag. SO. MUCH. WORK. And so much discomfort. BUT, I do love the dogs, so kennel sitting, and being IN Alaska, maybe that ended up BEING my dream. I don't know. It doesn't really matter to me so much, just knowing all the experiences I have been lucky enough to have had because sled dogs and Alaska became part of my dream life. But in those fifteen years, I have continued to grow and change, and my dreams have as well.

We moved out of town. That also wasn't a well-defined ultimate dream, until it happened, and until I found I am so deliriously happy with where I live I almost have to pinch myself to make sure it is real. I WANTED to live in town thirty years ago. I wanted to raise my kids in town, around other kids, and where they could do what they wanted, walk and ride bikes where they wanted, without me having to drive them everywhere.  When I expressed interest in moving out of town a few years back, I heard, "But YOU were the one who wanted to live in town."  Yes. Yes I was. And I did. And I raised my family there. And I don't regret it for one moment. But now? Now my kids are grown and gone, and my needs are not the same. I have a strong need for solitude and quiet, and not seeing people all day every day out my front windows. I guess that's the thing about growing and changing as a person - sometimes, often?, our desires and needs change, our dreams change. I didn't know that was possible, or even enviable for a long time. Being accused of changing seemed so negative, like I wasn't the same person. Eventually I learned that is a GOOD thing. VERY good. Who wants to still be the same person they were thirty years ago? That would mean I had learned nothing from all of life, from my mistakes, my successes, from other people, from all of my experiences. 

So where are my dreams today?  what ARE my current dreams?  Well, besides STILL wanting to be a good mom, I also now want to be a good, no, a GREAT, grandmother to my two grand-babies, Owen and Henry. I want to be important in their lives. I want to be someone they love, and want to be around. I want to be close to them. I want to be someone that they say to their mom, "I want to go to Grandma's; can we go to Grandma's?" 

 And, chickens. Guinea Hens. Raspberry bushes and black currants. Fertile hatching Eggs. Elderberry bushes and Elderberry syrup.Bluebirds. Brambleberry Farm. THAT'S my current dream. 

Oh. And that cabin in Alaska. 

The Ghosts of Chickens Past

 

     When we moved three and half years ago up here on the hill, my chicken coop stayed at our old house in town. Not because I didn't want chickens here, but just because it wasn't a priority right off the bat. Well, a year after we had settled in, I began asking for it to be moved. It wasn't an easy thing, so it got put off and put off. Finally, last September when I was in Alaska, my husband and son had it moved up here to surprise me with when I got home. I was surprised. And happy. But I knew it needed work to fix up, and to clean out, as when I had rehomed my last set of hens I never got around to cleaning it out then. Three and a half years ago... ewww.  It was also going to need the Fort Knox of pens built, since we share our acres and woods with fox, coyotes, bobcats, fishers and Bald Eagles, not to mention owls and hawks. And snakes. Sigh. I HATE snakes. So fall, heading into winter, wasn't the greatest time for gaining chickens, but I did know, come Spring, I would have chickens again. Chickens make my heart happy!
     It's Spring. Wet, gloomy, cold, but spring for sure. At least the calendar says so. I had chickens ordered for the first week in May, more coming the first week in June, and a third batch coming sometime in July or August, so I headed out to clean out the coop one day last weekend when it wasn't raining. Ewwwww..... why did I leave it full of chicken poo and wood shavings three years ago?

Because, that's me. That's what I do. But honestly, with it being as old and as dried out as it all was, it really wasn't a difficult cleaning job. And as I shoveled and scooped, I found multiple discarded feathers mixed in, and even a couple of old eggs, and eggshells. I found myself thinking about all the chickens I have had who have come before now. I thought about many of them individually, and some just as a group of "my chickens."  The memories made me smile. I love raising chickens, and find them to be highly entertaining, and very soothing to watch. They really kind of ground me. I'm excited to return to this phase of my life, knowing it will be even better this time around because I have more room, more time, and more knowledge.  I need to get the floor fixed and staple up hardware cloth inside and out to keep out the marauding animals who will think I've provided a banquet for them  - but that's a chore I look forward to because it puts me one step closer to having chickens again.

MY Next Thirty Years

     I was very attached to my old blog. I go looking back through it every once in awhile, just to reminisce. It's a great way of remembering what sometimes seems like other lives I've lived. Today I checked again as I was trying to set this one up, and I was actually startled to realize that I started that blog ten years ago. 2008. I kept it going, on and off, until 2014.  No wonder it seems like its from another lifetime. When I began that, my kids were 13, 15, 17 and 19.  That's CRAZY! I was still ten years away from retirement. I feel like ten years ago, I was almost an entirely different person. I've done a lot of growing - some painful, some awkward, some willing, much unwilling but necessary, much good, in the past ten years. I've missed writing for the last few years, and I decided it might be time again for that. Everyone tells me this is "my time" now, to do what I want.  Although I still feel a mighty obligation to work, more than not, I can also acknowledge that I do have way more 'free choice' time now than I have ever had before in my life. Since I'm not really sure how I want to, or will, fill that time, yet, I thought maybe I should at the very least, return to words. They have always been my solid ground, my bedrock, my home base to which I can return when the moorings might be a bit loose. I don't know that they are. They might be. Or they might not. But by putting words down, I can check them and see, and gain some new perspective on my future in the meantime. Some of the words to the Tim McGraw song, "My Next Thirty Years" come to mind tonight:

I think I’ll take a moment, celebrate my age

The ending of an era and the turning of a page

Now it’s time to focus in on where I go from here

Lord have mercy on my next thirty years