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mttz17
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Name: Matt
Gender: Male
Interests: the lives of friends, laughing, family, swedish fish, outside, steamed Crabs, acting, National Parks, ultimate frizbee, running, backpacking, classic rock and country/bluegrass music, therefore: God and tanlines, HarCo, and the beach and trains, hiking, maps, DQ blizzards, cigars in gazeebos on hilly fields, pubs, bookstores, caves, tattoos, films, not shaving enough, Native American morality and beliefs, lit'rature, bare feet on wet grass, roadtrips, rope swings over creeks, writing
Expertise: smelling reptiles
Occupation: take your pick
Industry: entertainment
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
2/5/2004
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| I'm afraid this could end up being equal parts notification and justification, as I already feel the need to explain my following decision to those of you who have been so supportive of my California adventure; therefore, I'll do my best to be brief and stick to the former. In a couple of weeks I'm moving myself and as much of my stuff as I am able across the country to MD, my home state, where I am accepting a position as an outdoor facilitator in the woods in Parkton. I'm going to live in housing provided to staff for free and spend three seasons of the year leading groups through high ropes courses and other experiential activities around central MD. I am very excited to be entering a field I love, working as part of a team, and spending more time outdoors. The opportunity to facilitate the introduction of the natural world to the students who will come through the program is something I will relish, and living in the woods is going to do wonders for my psyche, I'm sure. In addition, I am looking so forward to being close to my family and many of my friends and being a larger part of their everyday lives. Lastly, it will be really swell, especially in these times, to funnel most of my paychecks into savings since I won't have housing, food, or fuel costs. I haven't yet experienced life as a "new adult" in MD, so I'm excited about taking advantage of the opportunity to explore doing so, at least until the wind blows me back here to CA or elsewhere. In case you're curious, I've made this decision with my dubious acting career in mind. Having gone to school on the east coast, I have several contacts in the theatre scenes of DC, Baltimore, and beyond. It is my goal, while working and especially during the season I have off, to become involved in as many quality theatre productions and film opportunities as I can in the area. A steadier financial foundation will help me do this. Afterward, a beefier resume will help me ascend the industry ladder through proven experience and connections instead of pictures and meetings, and I hope to be able to delve into some more challenging work than I did in college. I really think being in a smaller pond will help me garner credits like these, and with more and more films and television shows filming in DC, Baltimore, and NYC, who knows would could come of it. The coolest thing will be that many of you might be able to see me act!
If you know of anyone whom you'd recommend I talk to, or any other helpful information about such opportunities, please let me know. Your favorite theatres, casting directors, art department heads, etc. It will make getting started in a new region a little easier. I haven't had regular access to a computer since November of last year, and the outlook of me getting it soon is bleak seeing as my laptop is broken beyond repair and my living arrangements don't include internet service. I'll try to keep up to date on here as much as possible, though I admit it's been refreshing not having constant access to the internet. My cell's still good. I want to thank those of you who have been so supportive of my past year and a half here and those of you here who have made it so interesting and enjoyable. I'm leaving LA on such a positive note that I'm hoping to come back some day, or at least visit frequently. One thing is for sure: I have learned a ton by using the city as my gateway to the real world. Hopefully, many of you will visit someday too, and so I've made a list of my favorite things in LA for you to reference. Mitch's LA Tour for those on a budget: The Swingset in Santa Monica: Right on the beach, just south of the famous pier, is muscle beach (Santa Monica version.) There you'll find rings, bars, ropes, and other equipment you can use freely. Just in front of it all is an adult size swingset, where you can swing up and look out over the ocean and the pier and the palm trees. Go around sunset. (FREE) Largo at the Coronet: On La Cienega Blvd, there is a musical venue that I have referenced many times in this blog. There I have seen the Watkins Family Hour (most Thursdays), Gillean Welch, John C. Reilly, Minnie Driver, Jackson Browne, Jon Brion, Fiona Apple, and many others perform in a casual and intimate old theatre. (www.largo-la.com) Topanga State Park: Driving west out of the San Fernando Valley then south down Topanga Canyon Blvd, you'll enter into Topanga Canyon, a beautiful, free-spirited canton community with shops and natural food stores and all that stuff. Follow the signs to Topanga State Park, drive to the top entrance, and park on the road just outside the entrance to avoid the 7 dollar parking fee. Hike to Eagle Rock, then back via the Musch Trail (5ish miles round trip). Anytime of the year is great, but if you go in the spring it will be greener, and anytime in the winter or spring temps will be perfect in the 70s. (FREE) The Getty Center: Along the 405 is the famous Getty Center, an art museum atop a hill with breathtaking views of the city and incredible gardens and architecture. No admission fee, but parking is $10.00 a car. Load up and spend an afternoon there! The free architecture tour is pretty interesting. Will Roger's State Beach. If you're going to a beach to lay out, swim, play volleyball, or toss the frisbee, go here. Take Sunset Blvd from the 405 and turn left once you get to Temescal Canyon Blvd. in Pacific Palisades. This will lead you down to the beach, but park along the sides of the road toward the bottom of the hill for free. Walk across the PCH, and there's a snack bar open during the summer months, the beginning of the bike trail that runs all the way down to Venice, and the cleanest beach in LA county. Look in the rock jetties for large, colorful starfish and sea anemones. (FREE) Cefiore Frozen Yogurt: In Santa Monica, Encino, Huntington Beach, and some more places. The best frozen yogurt in LA, and there are a LOT of places serving frozen yogurt. Get the raspberry-pamagranate flavor of they have it. Wacko's Store: On Hollywood Blvd in Los Feliz area, this is a store that sells everything from rare books to crosses and voodoo dolls to bobble heads. It's great, and not expensive. Allot enough time to get lost in there. The Cat and the Fiddle: A british restaurant and pub at 6530 Sunset Blvd in Hollywood. Tons of tables and seating and an outdoor courtyard with fire pits, trees and more seating. It's a fun time. I saw Joe Millionaire there. The Ahmenson Theatre: One of The Center Theatre group, where large Broadway-scale shows perform. My sister and I saw 9-5 there with Allison Janney, and afterward Spring Awakening came. Regular tickets are upwards of $120.00, but if you go to the box office during the day of the performance and ask for "hot tix," you'll get them for 20 bucks each. The earlier in the day you go, the better the seats are. The Blank Theatre: Noah Wyle is the artistic producer of this black box theatre on Santa Monica and Wilcox on Hollywood's Theatre Row. I recently saw (and met) Luke Macfarlane in a awesome production of the West Coast Premiere of The Jazz Age, a play about F. Scott Fitzgerald, his wife Zelda, and Earnest Hemingway. It's a great space. Costs about 25.00 per ticket. (www.theblank.com) If you have a car or can rent one, drive up the coast along CA 1 to Big Sur. one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. You'll go through Santa Barbara, San Louis Obispo, and some awesome coastland. Or drive East out the 10 and camp in Joshua Tree National Park, or visit Big Bear Lake. All beautiful places. | | |
| January third, two thousand nine, on the bluff above Eden Mill I ascended the bluff in zigzags
only twice reaching for the rail,
and when at the top I saw spring onions
that had survived the freeze,
I loosened my scarf.
Below, I strolled the swollen stream
and pushed the ice along the edges with my toes.
Further out, jagged pieces had been thrown
along with twigs to slide and stick to the surface-
stuck and separate; so I left (and will leave)
and made my way higher through the trees. Up here, the wind is slipping though
the dry and brittle weeds, which tap and rattle.
It carries the sounds of a chainsaw,
a distant crow, calls of children.
It picks up and becomes colder.
And now the sun is pushing shadows Eastward,
so I'll leave the hill to the night msm | | |
| It's been a fun few weeks. Dustin arrived recently for a short stint in the California sun, and we traveled up to Santa Clara, near San Jose and San Francisco to spend Thanksgiving with Aaron. It was a blast. We cooked a wonderful meal we could all be proud of, drank our way through over fourteen bottles of two-buck chuck, Visited San Francisco, forgot all-together the phone call from Jen, and much, much more. On the way up, Dustin and I took CA 1, which runs right along the surf all the way up the coast, and saw elephant seals and Big Sur and a lot of beautiful landscape.
The Tuesday after we returned to LA, I set up my Christmas tree, Nativity scene, and other decorations. It was really fun for me to pull down the large cardboard box labeled "Matt's Xmas Stuff" from the closet and take out my own things that, now that I've used them a second year, have become like my own little traditions. My favorite tree ornament: a little, silver, airstream trailer hanging by a red string I got one year as a gift from Lauren, the bulb with a Christmas scene painted on it along with the words "121 Thomas Rd," a gift from Dee and Jen Faulconer in college, the brown, stone sculptured nativity pieces mom gave me as a gift last year when I had my own place to decorate...
Decorating also reminded me of all the stuff we put out and do at Christmas at home. I'm sure the holidays are a nostalgic time for a lot of people, and I find Christmas to be one of the most authentically magical times of the year. I thought back to the five letter shelf decoration that, when arranged accordingly, could spell out S-A-N-T-A or S-A-T-A-N. Either way, the word had elves in long red pajamas hanging off the letters. Or I think of the wooden carousel of reindeer that spins in a circle when you light small, white candles under the blades that spin in a circle, and how Mom would remind us how old and special it was each time we dropped a piece or broke off a blade. My favorite decoration was a snowman made of s heavy ceramic-like material whose buttons and eyes lit up when he was plugged in and who wore a large black top hat and the warmest smile of all the decorations. And of course, at the center of everything every year is the nativity scene in the front window, complete with stable, hay bales, figurines, star, angel, sheep, and grounds of lighten garland on each side and the advent wreath on the coffee table. When we were younger we sat around it each night in the darkened living room and read out of one of several advent books that eagerly anticipated Christmas day with scripture and anecdotes. The smell of lit candles and snuffed matches along with the Christmas tree lights and cold weather outside makes it one of the my distinct memories. One year that sticks out in my mind more than the others is 1993, when I sat in tears holding hands with my family around the wreath and asked God to make my iguana, Elliot, better and keep him from dying from the sickness that was clearly taking over his little lizard body. A few days later my mom met me crying at the bus stop, and Dad went out in the garage and made a tombstone and a coffin out of a check box. We buried him in the frozen December dirt in the woods and my mom inscribed, with a black magic marker, "RIP Elliot- beloved Iguana friend of Matt Mitchell- Died December 9th, 1993" on the tombstone and my dad wrote me a note on an index card in outlined highlighter that said "You're a very special boy and I'm glad you're mine."
The activities around Christmas are memorable as well. Until we were old enough to really help instead of get in the way, the sole responsibility of putting up the outdoor lights fell to my dad, who pulled yards and yards of tangled lights out of boxes and sat in the living room or out on the sidewalk shaking and untangling them and cursing under his breath. He has since seemingly embraced the tradition and has a really great looking set up at the fence halfway up the drive with a nativity scene and blue star of Bethlehem; on the hill stand a couple of lighted deer, and there are are wreaths on the windows and lights along the roof. Mom would always look forward to baking thin sugar Christmas cookies from an age-old family recipe, and halfway through what had started as a carefree and sentimental activity suddenly came to resemble a annoying household chore. After we had licked the spoons and eaten half the first batches of cookies we lost interest in helping her roll the dough, watch the timer, or clean up and we rushed off to greener pastures, leaving her with flour all over the place and four more batches worth of dough. Around the same time, whatever Christmas CD she was listening to was on its fourth go-around and she was calling for one of us to go into the living room and change it.
Finding the tree is one of my favorite memories, and also one of those that seems to have been more fun for us children than for Mom and Dad, who had to do the driving, paying, cutting, dragging, and cleaning. With those tasks out of the way, we were free to run ahead through the cold, wet rows of trees and fight over which douglas fir or white pine looked best and demand that Dad and Mom look at our tree. The few times they mentioned an artificial tree in passing, we reacted as if they mentioned getting a divorce or killing all of our pets. "It might be 'easier'," we said. "But is it right?" I haven't been able to help pick out the tree for the past five or six Christmases, but I have a feeling it wouldn't be much different than it was when we were little even today. One farm we visited for a few years in a row had a giant barn adorned with decorations that played Christmas music and served hot cider as people in their scarves and boots walked across the straw on the floor and out into the trees with their saws. I really miss going to get the tree.
Before we went to bed on Christmas Eve, we listened to a radio broadcast of Santa's takeoff, the voice of the reporter drowned out by gusting icy wind. On Christmas morning we'd wake up, knowing that because we didn't have a fireplace, Santa himself had used the very same door we walked in and out of everyday. Under the tree were tons of presents, the tags written several different ways by my mom in order to disguise her own writing. My Dad chewed the sides off of carrots and threw them onto the roof and into the yard The glass of milk and plate of cookies were touched, but not finished, because Santa had a lot of work to get done before morning.
And, of course, getting the house ready for Christmas has reminded me of 121. In college, I lived in a big grey house on the crest of a hill on Thomas Road, complete with second story windows, a porch, and plenty of surrounding trees and bushes. Each Christmas, the Lynchburg College LAX team joined with Residence Life to sponsor a holiday decoration contest, wherein the winner would receive a nice of a gift certificate or LC LAX shirt. Well, they had us at "decorating contest." 121 was technically the theatre special interest house, although we tried to shake that name as best we could around the general student body. One look at us after we heard about the contest, however, and there was no hiding our flair for the dramatic. We planned major set-ups, and purchased bags and bags of lights, garland, ribbon, and other decorations from the dollar store and Walmart and wherever else we could drive to on a Saturday afternoon. Our first year of participating, we came in second to 511 Brevard despite hanging lights, sending Kristen crawling through the dark, filthy and splintery crawl space to shove a star of Bethlehem through the slatted vent in the roof and painting things in snow paint on the windows. We received black, long sleeve shirts from the Lacrosse team, which I still wear but which made Jen even more motivated to win the next year. "Well, I don't really wear black." She said after we had picked up the shirts from the Res Life office.
The second year, we purchased twice the amount of decorations and then forgot to get a head start on the decorating. I guess with finals and classes and work and winter performances, we lost sight of what mattered the most: beating the pants off the frat houses for a gift certificate to a restaurant of our choice. The night before the competition, Aaron and I went up the road and bought a live tree and drug it into the house in hopes that Res Life soon wouldn't be there. The night of the event, in about forty minutes, Jen ran outside and flung lights as high as she could over bushes and wrapped the trunks of trees and lined the yard and otherwise placed lights in a string of so many strands we were in danger of draining the grid. Shauna and I indiscriminately grabbed light strands, plugged them in, and tossed them onto the Christmas tree lasso-style in order to quickly move on to the next project. Amid screaming, running, and baking, we taped lights in the shape of "121" on the roof, nailed them to the siding around the windows, shoved plastic candy canes into the dirt along the sidewalk, hung a wreath from the door, and it still wasn't enough. When the judges came by, what is now affectionately known as the 121 Christmas Extravaganza began. Jen's mom gracefully went out to greet the panel, pushing them backwards into lawn chairs with a platter full of cookies. When we were sure they weren't going to leave, Megan Stegerwald and I started playing carols on our clarinets, which were as sharp as knives due to the cold weather. Aaron, Brenna, and Shauna sang lyrics, and the front door burst open and Jen and Chris shot out with looping arms and pointed feet, donned in a tutu and a leotard, respectively, and began an interpretive dance to The Nutcracker on the front porch.
No one knew what to think. Expecting to quietly pass by each house enjoying the lights in a relaxing manner, these people were suddenly witnessing what seemed like an elementary school holiday concert on crack. At the right moment, Dee launched into a spiel on how hard we'd worked, and there sat the Lacrosse coach, smiling, clapping in confusion and declining more cookies. The next week we were dining in style at Isabella's, a fancy restaurant where we ate like royalty on the school's tab.
Needless to say, that kind of holiday excitement is in short supply around this apartment. But, just last week Dustin and I joined Roxy and Patrick to see It's a Wonderful Life on the big screen at the Hollywood Arclight. Roxy, who is the best at sniffing out awesome entertainment events, wore a santa hat, and it really put me into the Christmas spirit seeing the movie all the way through for the first time since I was nine. A couple of nights ago Dustin and I went to Largo at the Coronet and saw The Watkin's Family Christmas with special guests Minnie Driver, John C Reilly and Jackson Browne and had an awesome time at the small and cozy venue. In a few days I'll be flying home, and it's going to feel awesome to be there after six months away to enjoy the holidays with everyone.
Merry Christmas!
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| So my computer is broken again. This time everything I do fails to get in started. I take out the battery, leave it in, unplug the machine, let it sit, sing to it...nothing. Yesterday I took the battery out and set it so far away from the laptop the two couldn't even see each other if they wanted to. Still no luck. It's driving me crazy. First of all there's the looming fear that I might lose everything on my hard drive: writing I have been working on and have yet to email to myself, pictures, videos... Also it's my number one connection to the world outside LA, and even LA itself as I use it for correspondence, research, checking weather, checking events, etc. I was going to look up recipes for Brussels Sprouts and homemade sports drinks the day it crashed, and now I can't even do that. Lastly, I can't access my online banking and substitute job system, which are pretty important. I'm now typing on my roommate's computer, so maybe I'll do a Google search before I get off.
Anyway, here's what I really wanted to write about.
I often asses the changes in my life since I've moved to LA, which has now been a little over a year ago.
There are many of course, good and bad: full time work versus the ten hour per week job I had in college, mental mold setting in since I have no academic activities anymore, my inability to remember what human contact feels like, a double bed versus a bunk or a twin, spending more hours mindlessly clicking around on the internet, Friday nights having lost their magic because of a lack of a social group and having to work on Saturday morning, a job as a temp replacement for teachers and a binder-checker at Huntington. I guess it's understandable that some of these changes would take a toll on me and explain some of the irritability and ho-hum cloudiness that sneaks into my days in sunny LA. I can't talk to Dustin without biting his head off, can't muster up even the most inane topic on the phone with other people, and my temper is rising and my patience waning with some of the more challenging or idiotic students I encounter during the day. [caution: rant ahead. mood lightens afterward.]
True, the election was a major boost, but I'm finding myself really disheartened about the passage of CA proposition 8, which will ratify the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage; it has made me a little bit more cynical about the goodness and morality of people. With much more spare time on my hands than ever before I am able to follow current events more closely and do a little research on some issues that are happening in California, the US and the World. With this passing, I also question people's intelligence. Voting to approve the removal of citizens' rights, no matter how uncomfortable or insecure you may feel about marriage between same sex couples, is pretty risky and largely unprecedented. It's true that rights have been denied to people by the US since our county's birth- Native Americans, blacks, women, and the Japanese during the internment are a few groups that come to mind, but taking them away once they are granted is something else altogether. At this rate, and if people continue to harbor such bigotry and need for power, pretty soon we'll not only be denied the right to marry who we please, but we won't be able to eat what we want, grow what we want, own guns, watch or read what we choose, live where we like, assemble for what messages we want to send, or worship who or what we want. The last example is ironic considering that a majority of funding for the campaign in support of prop 8 came from out of state from the LDS church in Utah. Separation of Church and State, anyone? Or do we want to forget about that and open up the opportunity for government-mandated weddings (almost there), mandatory face-coverings for women, laws regarding religious centric diets, schooling, households, holiday celebrations, etc.? I can think of a few countries like that- who base their laws on various religious teachings and moral code, and they're the very nations the US isn't too fond of right now. Separation of Church and State doesn't just mean separation of Christianity and government, like the no-prayer-in-school people get huffy about, it means separation from all religions that threaten to influence functions of government and strip its citizens of rights based on esoteric opinion and belief, even as fundamental as being able to choose a spouse. This separation is, in fact, what allows one to live his or her life in accordance with the teachings of the Bible and Jesus while his neighbor attends Hebrew school and the guy across the street eats beef and drives his daughter to beauty pageants without fearing that she might get acid thrown onto her as punishment for vanity. I'm just so upset that the state constitution has been ratified, not by a 2/3 vote, like it's supposed to be, but by 53% to 47% to take rights away from people. This is not America; in America we protect our freedoms. But I bet you that NRA's Freedom First magazine never ran a story about this right being stripped. And let's hope this never happens, but if our right to own rifles is taken away and I hear someone complaining about it who supported legislation like prop 8, I won't hesitate in the least to blame everything on him.
But I digress. See what I mean? I'm just more on edge these days. But I'll tell you, after considering everything, I think the change most responsible for the occasional short fuse is that I drink a lot less now.
It's true, I was never a huge drinker. And I spend more Saturdays waking up with regular vision and a settled stomach, I'm in better shape, and I'm saving money by not running up bar tabs, but I think the disadvantages outweigh the improvements ten-fold. I'll lay them out.
1. Alcohol helps to break up time.
My weeks don't seem to end or start anymore. They just keep continuing along forever. In college, I'd slave away constantly from Monday to Friday on papers and reports and class and rehearsal and meetings, but I could always count on the weekends to bring things to a slamming halt and put whatever was so important during the week on hold. On Friday, a quick assessment of the refrigerator was done and supplies were supplemented as necessary by a trip to the ABC store. Around 7:00, I'd start throwing a few back, and soon after I was B-lining it across campus with a large group of friends to a party where someone had converted their entire house to a booze shack. There, we'd find dancing in the basement and living room, beers in the fridge, wine or liquor on the counter, or a large Tupperware communal tub where various beverages were mixed into something called "jungle juice." Whatever project or paper was lingering over my head was scared off before long, and I'd wake up [somewhere] feeling like I'd spent a week in Cabo with enough pictures posted on facebook to suggest I had. And guess what? There was still time to do it all over again before the next week began! After some lounging, laundry, a walmart run, or a game of disc golf at Peak's View we started all over. By the time Monday rolled around I had forgotten to remember I was stressed and got a fresh new start on things. It was the ultimate reset switch. Here I can't find the weekends.
2. With drinking usually comes Games
Big, Loud, Social games where you either told all your secrets because of a card you drew in "kings" or flipped cups on a drenched table or played beer pong. It's an excuss for college aged people to have recess again. People rally around pieces of playwood purchased at the Home Depot and scream people's names and call fouls. Everyone likes a good tournament, whether it's horseshoes, darts, cornhole or beer pong, and it adds an element of risk when you drink as a punishment for losing that's just thrilling. I miss the games.
3. Beer bonds.
It's a known fact that alcohol helps people come together. See a familiar face across the room at a party? Maybe she's in your ethics class. Back row of environmental science lecture? Doesn't matter; if you've got a beer in your hand you can push your way over and spend two hours yelling to eachother over the music about nothing and you'll think you met a soulmate. The next morning four or five pictures on your digital camera will show your heads pressed together as one of you holds out an arm to take the picture.
Got an arch enemy? Not for long. At the right carefree, cheery frat party you'll be standing on the same chair, screaming the lyrics to Tim McGraw's "Somthin' like That" until someone fixes the sterio and the CD stops skipping. You may not write him a Christmas card, or give the girl in the back of your class much more than a smile and a "hello" the next time you see her, but at least you went to bed that night feeling like you had fun and connected with someone. Now I'm stoked just to have a conversation with someone over thirteen.
4. Alcohol provides you with stories to re-tell.
Okay, it's true no one likes the guy doesn't know when to stop rehashing a story or uses the same inside joke until it amounts to nothing but another article in his sentences, but sometimes incredibly halarious things happen when someone's drinking and people can really rally behind those stories to keep a dying conversation alive. It builds history quickly among friends.
I certainly don't hesitate to tell about when Ryan corned me in his dorm room for a half hour as he showed me his new cookware off e-bay, or when Mike about drunkenly assaulted a girl in a smirnoff dress on the subwoofer of The Greene Turtle on his birthday, or when Shuana came in from a night out and brushed her teeth seven times before going to sleep in the hallway, or when Randy put his belt on his head and ran around as Quail Man. And I have heard repeated stories about some blond kid at LA who cursed out an entire party and went home sobbing when his fish died or threw a fire extinguisher down onto the beer pong table from the second story of 121 or played beer pong on college street with himself until 5:30 in the morning. Some stories never get old, I mean look at Aesop's Fables.
Anyway, I swear I'm not an alcoholic. After-all, that's the point here: I haven't really gone drinking more than a handful of times in 13 months, which could be why I'm about ready to hit the crack pipe.
Just kidding. Anyone interested in a winter bar-crawl around Christmas?
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| If you know me (and you probably do pretty well, since I think only my parents and one or two others read this thing) you know how much I love the outdoors. It's one of the things that has kept me most sane after moving to this sprawling and crowded metropolis, and recently I've gotten a couple great opportunities to get out and play in Wind Wolves Wildlife Preserve and Yosemite National Park, respectively. Both were fun and beautiful, both had plentiful wildlife to witness, and both creeped me out a little. I went to Wind Wolves with Habitat Works, whom I join often to complete restoration, and because I had drowned my camera on a previous canyoneering trip with them I have no pictures of this outing. I'll do my best to offer a brief and entertaining summary of the weekend. We were dropped off at the top of San Endigmio Canyon at Pine Mountain Club, where we began our trip. It was very cold and windy when we started, and we hiked quickly further in to warm ourselves up and look for the Tamarisk we were removing. The head ranger hiked in with us for the first few miles to "make sure everything was okay." Looking back now, I realize pretty specifically that he was worried we'd come upon poachers. It was the opening day of deer season and they'd had previous problems with hunters sneaking onto the preserve to hunt without the nuisance of others in the National Forest that borders the preserve. Pretty soon, he started tracking when he believed were four grown men who had dropped into the canyon earlier than we had, judging on the size of their footprints and whatever else one looks at when tracking, and he went ahead of our group to make sure the coast was clear. Eventually we got word that he found four men with rifles noisily eating lunch down the canyon, explained to them that they needed to leave, and after a little bit of questioning they headed back in the direction they had come. Evidently they passed us out of sight, because he got to the place where they were encountered and the rangers radioed in for us to check the area for any signs of hidden animal carcases or belonging. We spread out and searched through the bushes. Someone found a pile of seven very large spent cartridges, and after a few minutes of searching someone came across two full backpacks with radios in them. Just after that I pushed aside some bushes and saw the freshly severed heads of two Mule bucks laying on top of each other next to three bags of bloody deer meat. We reported this on the radio, and we were informed that minutes before we found the items two of the men had ditched their ranger escort somewhere in the canyon and were heading back down toward their stuff and us.
This put us a little on edge, but we weren't too worried since there was no way for them to know we had found their carcases. But then we got word that Fish and Game was called in and apprehended two of the hunters at the top of the canyon where their cars were and that the other two missing hunters were aware of the impending trouble. We were then instructed to take pictures, gather "evidence," and carry everything with us further down into the remote canyon where were would be camping for the night. This is when people started getting amped up. One guy and I were apprehensive about taking other people's belongings, especially when the law enforcement was no where around and the men where upset and coming back. Another guy was gung-ho and started passing around the heads and bags of meat. One girl took both heads and started moving through the bushes and I was getting deer blood down my leg from the backpack I was carrying. People got really serious and started walking crouched down with their faces toward the soil looking for "blood splatter" so they could determine the "trajectory of the bullets." Obviously, if things were that important, they would have sent some officials in instead of relaying instructions to a group of backpackers, but it was getting late and we all had a lot of fun working ourselves up. We had a big hushed discussion about whether to leave the stuff and go or take it with us, and I began to hear people saying things like "well I don't think they'd shoot us,"and, "crazier stuff has happened..." or, "they're probably in the chaparral ten feet away watching what we're doing..." and finally, "Let's just get out of here."
So we dropped the stuff in a grove of cottonwoods and found a spot about a half mile down the creek to camp. We heard some gunshots, some radio reports of other hunters suspected to be in the canyon, and got instructions to bring the meat out the next morning. Then we went to bed. The next morning they radioed to tell us to watch out for bears and cougars who were probably scavenging the meat, and a couple of us I named the "carcass party" slowly approached the cottonwoods where there were no bears, no cougars, and where the stack of meat sat untouched. With the two heads. The rangers met us to carry it out and all was fine.
Other than that we removed a lot of Tamarisk, had some good conversation, slept under the stars (no tent need in SoCal) all tucked under a juniper like Christmas presents to keep the full moon out of our faces when we slept, and had a really great time. I left feeling like a member of CSI or something. The second trip I took was to Yosemite for a week with the Lindero Canyon Middle School eighth graders as a chaperon. During the week between Wind Wolves and Yosemite, Lauren visited me and we had an awesome time relaxing around here in LA. Then it was north on a coach bus to Cedar Lodge. I was really excited about the trip after sort of falling into the opportunity subbing for the coordinator. He's a cool guy, and I had been dying to see Yosemite. It worked out perfectly, and though I was a little apprehensive about not knowing anyone, I was jazzed. First of all, the park was just incredible: the granite formations, El Cap, Half Dome and The North Face, the Sequoias. The students were there with Yosemite Institute, which is a great outdoor ex ed program. The instructors were fun, and I was assigned to a group of thirteen students who were really funny and cool to be around. We got a great laid back and entertaining instructor and I learned a lot about the park and the things in it. It was a super opportunity. In addition, I got to know the other chaperons who were great. We hung out in the evening and during meals and I was just happy to have some social time with other adults since all I do is work with kids out here.
Anyway, two weeks prior to our trip, a rock fall crushed the cabins where participants and chaperons typically stay minutes after everyone left for breakfast, so we were lodging in areas that were last minute fixes. The first was a motel/hotel called Cedar Lodge. This is where the creepiness comes in. In 1999, Cedar Lodge was the location of a string of famous serial killings found later to be done by the maintenance guy who resided in employee room #4, directly over the restaurant we ate in every night. Of course, he is jailed at San Quentin now, but before he was caught he killed three park sightseers, burnt two of them in the trunk of an abandoned rental car, and went uncaught for months. The FBI had told people they had several people in custody who they believed were responsible. Not so. In July of that year, this same man randomly assaulted, killed, and beheaded a Yosemite Institute instructor as she was packing for a backpacking trip at her Y.I. house, part of the facilities we passed going into the park every day on highway 41. Again, Yosemite Institute is who we were there with. Cedar Lodge or the housing in El Portel, CA is not technically in the Park, but it falls under the park's jurisdiction because it is surrounded by federal land,and the rangers and FBI worked together to find the body of the girl, which was stashed in two places along the Merced river, and her killer, who after being questioned fled to the coast. There he was apprehended by an FBI agent who was under the impression he was only being pursued as someone for questioning. By that time, back in Yosemite, evidence linked him to the crime. Turns out, this agent worked on the famous 1970s case of a missing child who was abducted and used as a sex slave for seven years before escaping, part of the time in an apartment right in Yosemite Valley. The agent recognized the serial killer right away as being the child's older brother from all the publicity the family received at the time. When he approached him, he immediately noticed something was up and he proceeded to cuff the killer and soften him up with sympathetic talk of his brother's ordeal to get him to confess to the killing of the young Y.I. instructor. He did, and then confessed to the other killings that the FBI had pegged on someone else. Apparently in interviews investigators heard over and over again that an overwhelming number of young women said the guy creeped them out and they were scared of him.
Well, I heard briefly about this while staying at the Cedar Lodge from a teacher on the trip. Later, when we moved to Wawona camp, I picked up a book belonging to a chaperon called Death in Yosemite, and curiously looked to see if this case was in there. It was, and I spent a good chunk of time reading all about the gruesome details and the confession transcript alone in the cabin in the middle of the pine forest around Wawona, which thoroughly spooked me. Yosemite, in all it's beauty, is isolated as all hell. The sun is only directly visible in the middle of the day since the High Sierras and granite cliffs block it during morning and evening hours. Once in a while a car will come by. The employees of the Lodge and the park services all live on site, and the few who don't live in tiny towns like El Portel and Mariposa which seem just as isolated. Yosemite was beautiful, as you can see by the pics below, and I had an awesome time. The creepiness, and the excitement at Wind Wolves, was caused by people and not by being out in the wilderness, so this blog's title is perhaps unfair or misleading. Every time I go out I affirm the calling I have to live as natural a life as possible and facilitate that connection for others. Check out all the pictures at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2026284&l=bda87&id=31300541 
Yosemite Valley
I was the chaperon leader of the "Yo Semite Warriors"
Half Dome reflected
The California Tree and me (in white shirt)
Lichen on Pine bark
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