Longtime readers know that it's a tradition for my extended family to gather up at my parents' camp during early July. We'll spend the week swimming and sailing, playing Ultimate and bocce, eating and talking. At night, we'll sit around the campfire and slap at mosquitoes. I'll be offline, of course, since my tent doesn't have wireless. But I'll return with stories and photos.
My husband and I spent several days of our vacation hiking in national parks – or natural areas just outside national parks. He had looked up hiking trails ahead of time, choosing obscure trails that wouldn’t be crowded. They certainly weren’t crowded. Usually, we’d be the only car at the trailhead, and I wasn’t always sure the path we'd found was a trailhead. I’m used to the mountains in my state, where the trailheads have brown signs and places to register before you start on the hike.
I kept leaving notes on the dashboard of our car, noting the time we’d left, the number in our party (2), and our destination. My husband thought that was a little paranoid. On the other hand, he was a bit paranoid about the wildlife.
Him: Ew. What’s that? Me: Bear scat. Him: But it looks … new. Me: Yeah. Him: What if we run into a bear? Shouldn’t we know what to do? Me: Some bears, you’re supposed to stay quiet, some you make noise. Him: WHICH KIND OF BEARS ARE THEY? Me: I don’t know. Him: We should have a plan. In case this bear comes back. Me: Well, you could drop the backpack. It’s got food in it. Him: What? I’m like … walking bear bait? Me: I think for rattlesnakes, you stay still. Him: Rattlesnakes? Me: They can only strike as far as half the length of their bodies. Him: Great. I’ll just measure the coils. Me: It’s humbling, isn’t it? Nice not be the top predator in the woods. Him: I’m going to write that on your tombstone.
We disagreed about what constitutes a hike. I call pretty much any walk in the woods a hike, especially if we are moving up the side of a mountain. My husband doesn’t think a walk qualifies as a hike unless you’re drenched in sweat, about to drop from heat exhaustion, and ready to kill yourself if you see yet another set of switchbacks.
Of course, no matter how strenuous the hike was, it was always great to make it to the summit, to sit on a rock and just gaze out at the view. Sometimes we’d hang out long enough to see a few other hikers straggle onto the rocks. These other hikers were always more prepared then us. Here we’d be, in the middle of nowhere, hours from the nearest road, and they’d pull out sandwiches and drinks and potato chips that somehow had remained uncrushed on the hike. My husband and I would watch enviously, as we sat on our rock with water and trail mix, and vow next time that we’d be more prepared. Then we’d start down the trail so that the other hikers wouldn’t notice us salivating.
On my second day in Famous City With Space Needle, Ecowoman had to go to work. I told her not to worry, that someone I had met online was going to come pick me up, and I was pretty sure she wasn’t an axe murderer. “And if she’s a stalker, I’m still okay,” I said cheerfully, “because I’ve given her your address and not mine.”
Jane Dark and I had a wonderful day. We began by wandering around a beautiful Japanese garden, relaxing on a bench to talk, and then watching some little kids feed the most aggressive koi fish I’ve ever seen. Really, the koi fish were almost as creepy as rabbits.
On the campus of University Rub-a-dub, we went into a special room of the library and got to look at some amazing book art by artists like Julie Chen. They even let me touch the pages! I’m so used to getting yelled at in museums that I was thrilled to get to handle these gorgeous books. Our tour of campus included a room that looked like Hogwarts’ great hall, except it was filled with Americans students instead of British wizards and witches.
After our lunch with Rokeya, we looked at our watches and realized that we were running out of time. I don’t know where the day had gone, except that I had already gotten Jane lost at least once. People get lost when they are with me. It’s a special talent I have.
Jane had planned an ambitious naked photo shoot: “Okay, we’ll go out in kayaks, and I’ll just slip off my dress without anyone noticing, and I’ll pose with the skyline of the city in the distance. And you just balance in the other kayak and take the shot.”
I could see this easily turning into some kind of comedy routine that would end with my camera at the bottom of the sea. But alas, we didn’t have enough time.
“Well, it should be an outdoor shot,” I said. “But maybe we could do it on land.”
“Here’s a private spot,” said Jane.
“Just pretend you’re a statue. You know, like in Europe how the formal gardens always have statues in them?”
She tossed off her dress and sandals, and I snapped the photo. Now all we need is a sculptor.
I met so many bloggers at the Friendly Green Conference that I've lost track of them all. Then when I went to University Rub-a-dub, I found two bloggers dancing on the edge of a fountain. Jane Dark and Rokeya took me to a place that served tasty vegetarian food and we talked about all kinds of stuff over lunch. It’s always great to hear the voices of people whose blogs you’ve read for years, especially when they turn out to be as smart and articulate and cool as you thought they were going to be. After lunch, one of them posed naked for my blog. But that’s another post ….
In City Where Jimi Hendrix Was Born, I stayed for a couple days with my friend Ecowomen. Longtime readers will remember her as the woman who inspired the tradition of naked blogging. Her cute little house is tucked into a garden of purple and yellow blossoms. When I arrived, bits of colored glass were twirling in the breeze near the front door, catching the afternoon night. I felt like I was in a movie as I walked into a house filled with pillows and colorful treasures.
Ecowoman buys old framed photos at yard sales, and then hangs them up, even though they are people she’s never met. They are mixed in with all her other pictures. When I was looking at the photos, she would say things like, “Yeah, that’s me and my mother. Here are my parents when they were young. Oh, that one? Yard sale family.”
Naturally, she and I talked over the Friendly Green Conference in great detail, and then went on to talk about stuff going on in our lives. She kept threatening to do a make-over of me. Apparently dressing like a teenage boy does not make me the height of fashion.
"You're meeting your husband for a romantic vacation and THAT'S what you're wearing?"
"We're going hiking," I protested. "And we'll be naked the rest of the time."
We sat at her table in the sun and ate fresh baguettes with deli foods. All during my stay, she kept taking care of me. “Are you hungry? Now, here are some clean towels. Can I get you anything else?”
“You don’t have to keep waiting on me,” I protested. “I’m a grown-up.”
“You’re in my house,” she said. “That makes you eight.”
We hadn’t planned, actually, for Ecowoman to make another naked appearance on the blog, but early one morning, I found her dancing naked in her backyard. I think she had papers to grade. Nothing inspires nudity like a stack of papers to grade.
Naturally, I ran for my camera.
“This setting is perfect,” I said, “but take off your hat so I can see that gorgeous hair.” At the sight of my camera, she stopped the wild frolicking and posed demurely, looking up to smell one of the flowers in her garden.
Then she pulled out her bicycle, put on some clothes, and rode off to catch the boat she rides to work.
The sound of waves crashing on a beach makes me feel small and insignificant.
The West Coast Ocean sounded and smelled and looked very much like the East Coast Ocean that I’m used to. But the sun was in a different place. Late afternoon, I’d look through my camera towards the ocean, and I’d be startled to see the sun shining towards me. It was like the dramatic moment in a futuristic movie when the actor suddenly notices two suns instead of one.
My husband and I sat in the sand one evening to watch the sunset.
“Isn’t that bizarre?” I asked him. “The sun setting into the ocean! I feel like I’m in a science fiction novel. Something weird and futuristic. ”
The Campus where Friendly Green Conference Was Held offered beautiful outdoor places for conversation: courtyards filled with flowering bushes, a fountain that made lovely water noises, a quiet pond, a grassy knoll beneath some totem poles.
One morning I woke up at 5:30 am to explore a protected area on the edge of campus, a forested ravine that was acquired by the university in 1993 after a student-led activist group convinced them that they needed to save the forested ravine from development. I walked in under the tree canopy, followed a dirt path that wove through ferns and over a stream, and watched the sun sending rays of light through tree branches.
One evening, Easy-going German Friend and I walked through a formal garden that was carefully fenced to keep the rabbits out. The flowers were just past peak, and the grounds were strewn with petals, gorgeous colours spread across the grass. “Are you sure this is a college campus?” I kept asking my friend as we’d turn the corner to see a stand of bamboo or a reflecting pool or another carefully groomed bed of flowers.
Of course, the best thing about Beautiful Campus on Canadian Island is that the walkways and buildings were infested with Friendly Green Folk. In my book, a college campus can only be improved by herds of Friendly Green Folk trampling into a dining hall or gathering for a plenary or sitting on the grass to talk. More than 650 of us who descended upon the campus for this conference. We almost outnumbered the rabbits.
Our first night on Beautiful Campus Where Friendly Green Conference Was Held, my roommates and I went out to find a grocery store. As we walked down the road, I spotted a couple of rabbits on the embankment, eating grass in the afternoon light.
“Oh, aren’t they cute?” “Shh … don’t scare them.”
We stopped, charmed by the chance encounter with some urban wildlife.
“Aw, look, there’s a baby one.” “They don’t even seem afraid.”
On our walk back, we noticed more rabbits as we came onto campus. Black rabbits, this time. And then some white ones. Unlike wild rabbits who dart away at any movement, these rabbits paid no attention to us. It was dusk when we reached the lawn nearest our dorm suite, grass that was cropped suspiciously short. Dark shapes, perhaps thirty or forty of them, came crawling across the open space.
Three rabbits eating grass in the sun is cute. Forty rabbits approaching in the dusk is creepy.
For the next seven days, between plenaries and concurrent sessions and meals in the dining hall, we talked about the rabbits. They were everywhere. Hundreds of rabbits, someone said. No, thousands, said someone else. They’d begun as pet rabbits dumped onto the campus, an environment with so few predators that they had bred like … well, like rabbits.
One colleague said he was tempted to jettison his paper and instead do an ecocritical analysis of Night of the Lepus, the 1972 horror film in which people are terrorized by mutant rabbits.
“Can you imagine what this place must look like at Easter time?” asked another colleague. “Eggs everywhere!”
Jokes turned to serious discussion: it was pretty easy to see that the rabbits who conveniently kept the lawns cut short were also destroying any native vegetation. They are as much a nuisance as a source of entertainment.
Many of us had been talking about Alisa Smith and J.B.Mackinnon’s book The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating which chronicles a couple’s attempt to eat only foods that came from within a hundred miles of where they live. “Eat local” has become the new mantra amongst food activists. So the solution to the rabbit problem on campus seemed obvious to us: scoop those tame rabbits up and feed them to the students.
We never did get to propose our idea to anyone who might enact it, but the jokes and conversations about the rabbits continued. When I walked through the campus late at night, the flocks of rabbits, usually sitting motionless and staring at me, gave me chills. Many of my colleagues, on the other hand, found them cute. Between sessions, I’d see colleagues crouched on the ground, photographing the bunnies.
“Where’s the next conference?” asked Curly Hair. “I’m hoping for alligators or maybe bears.”
“How come you never mentioned the rabbits?” I asked Charming Canadian Host. I may have sounded a bit accusing, but after all, he spent a whole weekend with the leadership team when we were planning the conference and he never mentioned rabbits. Not even once.
He shrugged. “If your campus was infested with rats, would you tell everyone?”
When I arrived in Beautiful Island City for the Friendly Green Conference, the first thing my roommates and I did was walk to a grocery store to buy food and flowers for our dorm suite. The second thing we did was yoga. Within minutes of getting back to our shared lounge, we had moved the furniture to the side and stretched out on the floor. Smart Articulate Roommate With a Lovely, Lilting Voice led the yoga session, telling us when to bend and to breathe. I’d spent the day scrunched into cramped airline seats on three different flights, so stretching those muscles felt wonderful.
In academia, conference organizers often don’t recognize that we have bodies. I’ve been to academic conferences with programs so jam-packed that there were no slots for breakfast, or lunch, or supper. I’ve been to events where I had to rush from session to session with no time to even use the bathroom. The intellectual stimulation of an academic conference is wonderful and fulfilling, but spending a whole conference sitting at sessions held in the basement of a big hotel can leave me reeling out of balance, like my mind has been ignoring the fact that I have a body.
Friendly Green Conferences, held on college campuses rather than big hotels, are different. Perhaps because our focus is on environmental issues, the organizers recognize that our bodies can’t be ignored. Even more importantly, the Friendly Green Association strives to be a community, rather than simply a space for the intellectual exchange of ideas. The value of a conference comes not just from the brilliant thoughts presented by speakers, but in the face-to-face conversations we have with colleagues from all over the earth.
The Friendly Green Conference schedule included generous time slots for meals and bathroom breaks and discussions outside in the sun. Friday afternoon was set aside for field trips: after several days of intense intellectual stimulation, it felt great to go ocean kayaking and to swim in icy water. The Friendly Green Conference was an atmosphere conducive to talking about the concerns of the body, from the way our bodies react to toxins to the ways the dominant culture can encourage body hate.
Throughout the week, conference participants kept offering to pose naked for my blog, but since I didn’t carry my camera to sessions, it seemed easiest to choose one of my roommates. That's the tradition, after all. When Lilting Voice volunteered, I thought that some kind of yoga pose would be fitting.
“I’ll put a blanket on this table,” I said. “The texture will work well with your bare skin. The early light’s just right.”
The lounge area was already decorated with a vase of flowers – and a string of chili peppers that EcoWoman had brought. (We like to make ourselves at home, even in campus housing.) As I moved the flowers off the table, Lilting Woman said, “Why not leave the flowers?”
“No, that would look fake,” I said. “Why would you be lying on a table with flowers?”
“Look, honey,” she said. “Let’s acknowledge that there’s some artifice here. You didn’t just come across me lying nekkid on a table.”
She stripped off her clothes and climbed onto the table, her hair in the ponytail she wears whether she’s doing yoga or chairing a meeting. “How’s this?”
Lilting Voice is a leader in the Friendly Green Community, someone who knows how to get things done while somehow being polite and tactful and friendly. She’s a woman who nurtures the intimacy that can happen when people spend time together. She and I are the same age, and we'd been already been talking about our bodies, comparing stories. Despite a bit of artifice, it felt natural to be taking a photo of her as she sat naked in the early morning light.
