I spent all morning today analyzing the gut contents of rainbow trout. It was actually amazing to pick through, pull out the invertebrates, and try to identify them. I found that a surprising percentage of the organisms were terrestrial and it was so neat to feel like I’d made a discovery. I even have a lab coat. The idea that someone could look at me and say, “Get that woman a lab coat” is just hysterical.
And it’s so funny to be around scientists. Hippie scientists at that. Everyone hangs out and plays bacci and smokes and talks about the universe but they know what the hell they are talking about. These people hear about social trends and graph them in their heads and actually have the thought of, “I’ve got to get home to graph that so I can see what it does.” They analyze the contents of fish food and say, “Ah, I’ve studied those. They’ve got lots of hemoglobin so they’re good for oxygen.”
I went a birthday party and was cleaning up my dish and had a social custom crisis. I had to get rid of the rest of my ice cream cake and I didn’t want to put it in the compost because I thought they might not want the sugar and artificial stuff in their compost. But I spent too much time in the kitchen and decided to let the bacteria have it. Although, I’m sure it was a total faux pas. I’m sure they will say, “My god, who put ice cream in the compost. Oh, she’s from New York.”
One thing that I do find fascinating, and that I also noticed of the more south west coast, is that they were not founded by Puritans, and it shows. They don’t have any of the same shame about sex, so they don’t have as much insecurity, which – I think – leads to less stereotypical gender roles, gays included. Totally gentle, small, caring, unassumingly heterosexual men can go through their entire lives without thinking they are less of a man in the slightest. Butch older women with sensible haircuts and designer eyeglasses accompanied by identical partners, who may, or very well may not, be lesbians, literally polka dot the landscape.
But they also don’t assume as much about sex as I’ve felt those in New York and New England have; it doesn’t generally seem to be on everyone’s mind. It’s like we got all the Freud and they got all the Jung. I am living with my Professor, and after all the eyebrow raising and sarcastic commentating I got back East, I don’t think one Canadian has even had a dirty thought enlaced in their reaction. It’s actually customary, and neither presumptuous nor scandalous, to go camping alone with a man you just met who might even have a girlfriend. And no, that’s not only from experience, I did a survey.
But I did actually go camping and I did actually spend the weekend sleeping on moss near a river in a rain forest known for its mountain lions, black bears, and two thousand year old trees. We cooked off the fire of this old man who used to be a chemistry field scientist and simply realized he had no place attempting to fit into society. He now lives in the woods and knows the lineage of the local bears and will talk your ear off about how the World Bank rigged the Great Depression. He listed and offered each smokable plant and sap of the local trees. He told me this unbelievable strategy for turning schwag into blazing herb by somehow using dry ice but, ah, I can’t really recall what he said to do...I listened to an impassioned debate over which species and strain of psilocybens were ideal for each type of journey and cursed my negligence at forgetting a pen.
I also had interesting fortune to find out what I’m like when I actually think I’m about to die. I was peeing at two in the morning, petrified of becoming food for some of the local fauna, when this three foot high by four foot long light brown animal (it was a dog) comes running at me (to see what I was doing) and I stood up and let out an actual scream of terror. The dog just bolted but I don’t think I’ve ever screamed in terror for real since I was about ten, but it was actually sort of fun to be *that* scared and live. Adrenalin is neat.
The next morning I woke up all sheepish, but no one had even registered my primal call of distress. They all, understandably, look forward to their encounters with pumas and bears, especially because brown bears won’t attack unless they think they’re being threatened. Pumas, however, will stalk you. There's a story from about three years ago in which this guy was riding his bike and looked back to see one trotting behind him. The cougar keeps getting closer till it’s an all out chase and the cat eventually jumps up and drags him off the bike. He only lived because someone else drove by, jumped on the cougar and beat the hell out of it. And it was only ten years ago since a perfectly sane, lost mountain lion was tranquilized in the parking lot of the downtown five-star hotel. So you can understand my concern at two in the morning while actually in their habitat. But it seems that I’m an anomaly; in general, the people I know are just like, “Eh, yeah, we could get eaten. But we probably won’t.” Not even baddass-like; just
logical.
In fact it’s the same logic that allows everyone the luxury of never locking their doors and letting their girlfriends go off to camp with single men. They think, “Sure it happens, it might, and then we deal with it when it does.” They’re so chill I can’t even fathom where they’re coming from.
And it’s an atmosphere like this in which anarchy actually does start to make sense. Because everyone’s so chill, there's not as much danger, and not as much need for punishment systems or legal codes to define appropriate behavior. In the States, we need that rigidity because Americans need laws like white trash need religious fundamentalism: without it, everyone would be sleeping with their siblings and chaos would rule.
But then you have to wonder if the rules and jails of society are actually creating the environment in which they are necessary. Although we can’t very well scrap the police state altogether with so many crazies on the loose…who knows.
It does seem that things are going to get quite a bit chiller around here for me, as I’m moving into a commune of eco-commie hippies next week. I guess that “cry for help” email was really more of a heads-up over where I might be heading. My recently be-Cali-d friend Megan put it best when she said, “the best part about the west is that you can have a latte AND hug a tree at the same time!"
But I’m still showering, so don’t worry. I’m actually quite sure I’ll get kicked out at some point in the near future when they discover my non-hemp accessories and proclivity for booty house...