Facing Fear and Chasing Joy

I live in Alaska and I’m afraid of bears.

Summer has been slow in coming this year.  It’s almost August, and we’ve had maybe a few days when it’s felt warm enough to say, “Yeah, this is summer.”  The fireweed took forever to bloom, and I can’t imagine that berries are flourishing.

Which brings us back to bears.  They’re hungry, and looking for food.  Last week we saw a black bear running through the post office parking lot across the street.  That same bear had also tried to climb into the hot tub on the deck of a first floor condo in our building.  Some of our neighbors leave bags of dog food outside, and I heard that the bear polished those off.

Remember my plot in the Girdwood Community Garden?  A few months ago, when I was first tucking seeds and starts into the soil, I was all alone in the garden when a moose came trotting down the only-way-in garden path.  I had to exit the garden quickly via the boggy area between my plot and the church parking lot.

The community garden is very secluded.  It’s surrounded by woods on two sides, by the bog on the third, and by the church and its parking lot on the third.  When I’m at the garden, there’s rarely anyone else there, and the wind in the tall trees always sounds like an animal rustling in the brush.  With hungry bears on the prowl, I’m having a hard time talking myself into tending my garden.

I spend a lot of time feeling bad about not facing my fears–including my fear of bears.  I don’t like the idea of tent-camping in bear country–but I feel like I should just do it.  Learn how to use bear spray.  Learn how to be outdoors in bear country safely.  Don’t let my freedom be limited by my fears.

But then last night a friend said, talking about a deep-seated fear, “You know, I just don’t want to do anything about it right now.  And that’s OK.”

Isn’t it interesting how much shame we feel about not facing our fears?  We have to work really hard to get to the point where we can say, “Doing X makes me feel really uncomfortable.  And it’s OK that I have chosen not to do it.”  The flip side of this is that it’s also really difficult to give ourselves permission to chase our joy.  Maybe it’s a leftover remnant of the Protestant work ethic. Painfully hard work?  Good.  Sheer joy?  Bad.

I don’t know what I’m going to do about the garden.  But I’m grateful for the breathing room my friend’s comment gives me.  I’m grateful for the reminder that facing fear and chasing joy are both choices I’m free to make, without judgment that one is always good, and the other always bad.

What Does My Garden Grow? Slugs.

Warning:  this post is not for the “revere all life” crowd!

The weather in Girdwood has been cool and wet for the past month, and many of us are wondering if the warm weather we had in May was as much summer as we’re going to get this year.

The slugs in my garden love it.  In fact, they’re my plot’s most productive crop.   My blue five-gallon water bucket has become a slug abattoir and morgue.  On each visit to the community garden, I spend time scouring my fifty square feet for slugs, and flinging them toward the water bucket.  Every time I’m there, more slugs have appeared.

Time to find out exactly what slugs are, and how I can encourage them to enjoy some other feast–or suffer the consequences.

Taming the Alaskan Wilderness

Before we closed on our condo late last spring, I contacted the woman who runs the Girdwood Community Garden.  How do I get a plot? Can I help get the garden ready for spring?  Would you like donations of things like hoses and tools and lawn mowers?

And then Murphy’s Law kicked in with a vengeance.  Everything that could go wrong did go wrong.  It was October before we were living in Girdwood full-time, and I didn’t get a community garden plot last summer.

This winter I was determined.  I asked for a gift certificate from Seeds of Change.  I ordered seeds, hand tools, row markers.  I got a bright orange five gallon bucket from Home Depot, and a Fiskars bucket caddy.  I checked in with the garden coordinator on a regular basis.  I was ready to go.

In mid-May, I looked out the window of the Girdwood Community Chapel and saw the community garden.  Tucked in among the trees, it did not match my imagination’s picture of sunny abundance.

When I finally got my plot, I was quite discouraged.  Filled with devil’s club, horsetail, ferns, and other weeds I didn’t recognize, my very uneven plot was on the shady end of the garden.

But I had seeds.  And tools.  And row markers.

So I dug in.  Literally.  One of my new tools was a handy-dandy weeder that made an excellent scythe.  Made in Japan, it’s called a Negiri Gama hoe.

There were two stumps in my plot.  One was small and near the edge.  The other I dug and cut until it released its death grip on the glacial clay; I took it home as a trophy, and it’s still living on the balcony.

As I was working to level the plot, the earth gave me a gift:  a softball-sized chunk of granite-studded quartz.

Day after day I worked, digging stumps, pulling out rocks, creating a semblance of levelness.  Finally it was ready for weed barrier–and soil.  I dragged one wheelbarrow full of dirt down the uneven, stump-filled path before enlisting some help.  It’s amazing how much faster a bed fills with five people working on it, rather than just one.

Somewhere in this adventure I discovered that I’m more attached to this raised bed that I built from the ground up than I would have been had my plot been move-in ready.  My fifty square feet of “tamed” Alaskan wilderness is as quirky as I am, and I like it that way.

I Will Never Be This Cool

No matter how many tie-dyed t-shirts I own, I will probably never be the kind of person who’s free enough to enjoy my morning coffee while sunbathing on the roof with friends.

It’s a banner day when I remember to take the laptop out on the deck, and blog from the comfort of our Adirondack chair.

I just got home from meeting with someone who told me, “I can’t make myself sit inside in front of the computer.”  I told her, “I have to work really hard to make myself go outside!”

My meeting was with the woman who organizes Girdwood’s community garden, making arrangements to have a plot this summer.  Like my responsibility to our dog, my commitment to that patch of earth will help drag me off the couch and into the precious few months of Alaskan summer.

Treasures in Unlikely Places

Flint is the New Jersey of Michigan.  Well, without all the rich people, pharmaceutical companies and beachfront.  Other than that, just like Jersey.

Most people experience my home state through the lens of the Newark Airport or the Jersey Turnpike.  Its starring role in HBO’s Sopranos didn’t do much to change those gritty perceptions.  Unless you’ve lived there, you’re likely to think that “the Garden State” is a misnomer.  Jersey natives, however, know that sunny June days are for strawberries, hot July days are for blueberries in the Pine Barrens, even hotter days in August are for peaches, and finally, the cooler days of September are for the apple orchards in NJ’s northwest corner.  All summer long, of course, it’s time for ripe, juicy Jersey tomatoes.

Mention Flint, and the response of most Michiganders is something like, “Can anything good come out of Flint?”  If Michigan is one of the epicenters of the current recession, then Flint is an epicenter of an epicenter.  Flint began to rust while the rest of the state was still flourishing.

So when we were visiting family in Michigan last week, and I mentioned that I wanted to visit the Flint Farmers’ Market, they were surprised, to say the least.  My partner’s sister agreed to come with me, so I printed directions and we ventured out.

Getting there was easy–highway 475 to exit 8A.  There were great signs directing us, though following them meant crossing three lanes quickly.  We could tell even before we parked that coming had been a great decision.

The Flint Farmers’ Market is big.  Not quite Pike Place, but definitely leaning in that direction.  Open year round, it has indoor space for permanent vendors, and outside space for seasonal ones.

There’s a butcher shop, and several vendors selling poultry.

The cheese shop made me want to hand them a twenty-dollar bill and ask for a smidgen of everything.

Of course, I bought the farm-fresh, free-range eggs–but not the cute bantams shown here.  The five of us ate the full dozen for dinner that night.

We both liked these raised beds–particularly the trapezoids, which could be arranged in any pattern.  And yes, I had to look up the name of the shape.

The wine store that anchors one end of the indoor market was a big hit with my traveling companion, who took this photo to remember to track it down closer to home.

Everyone we met at the market was exceptionally friendly.  The vendors were more than happy to answer our questions.  My partner’s sister is a graphic designer for a small, family-owned grocery chain, and she made several connections, both for her freelance work and on behalf of her employers.

If you live in Michigan, the Flint Farmers’ Market is a great day trip.  We spent a few hours, but easily could have spent three times as long there.   They’re open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.  If you’re elsewhere, I hope you’ll find time to visit a farmers’ market near you.  How many other opportunities come your way to have fun–and do something good at the same time?