Category Archives: the wilderness

Just a few more months

08 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by in nursing, slate falls, the wilderness

≈ 3 Comments

First it was only going to be for three months, then four, then six more, and after that came another six.

And a year and a half later I hand it the letter that explains hows grateful I am for the experience, but yes, the rumors are true.

I will be leaving Slate Falls, September 31, 2012.

I know I’ll start to look back the minute I leave. Not wishing for it again or doubting my decision, but looking back with that clarity that  history brings. Going over the moments. The things I wish I would have done. The lessons I learned that I am not noticing yet.

Right now, it’s still just daily life.

And it is hard for me to see it as anything but that. I’m still getting up at 7 and getting to work by 830. I’m still packing lab coolers and organizing the pharmacy. I’m still walking home and covering for medical driver on the weekend. I’m still getting called to guard at the jail. I”m still dealing with the emotional remains of too many kids almost dying this winter.

But I know, as soon as my car pulls out of Rawhide Rd, and I realize this is no day trip to Dryden for groceries, it will all come crashing in.

All the joys, and victories, the regrets, and I-wish-I-would-haves will be brought into sharp focus by the very act of pulling away, of cutting off, of leaving.

So for now, I just do the next thing, and breath in the lake air a little deeper, trying to save up for the day when I won’t be able to run down to the dock to watch the sunset.

Just mostly tired

16 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by in 3 am moments, canoeing, the wilderness

≈ 5 Comments

The other day I was talking with my Mom about people who write their lives out on blogs so you never have to wonder what is happening.

You always know were they are and what they are doing.

“Well, that is definitely not your problem”, she said.

Which is true, I guess.

I won’t say I’ve been neglecting my blog, because it’s not neglect when you only have an agreement to write only when you can.

I feel nothing would be relevant or make sense.

But that’s what I always say.

And maybe that’s why unconsciously I’ve pulled away from many of you.

After so long, it’s not really the thing anymore to write facebook messages asking for prayer when something traumatic happens. That was sooo last year, when it all was so new and fresh.

I can’t really write about daily life, as I’ve said before. And I can’t really discuss current topics since I don’t really know what’s current and trending. Is it still the thing to makes those cute little flowers for your Sunday cardigan or was that soo last year, like my frantic prayer requests?

I am still in Slate, just in case you didn’t know 🙂 And will be until fall for sure, though beyond that is unknown.

And I drink tea out of bowls now.

Um, so the black flies are back.

Also, I joined 11 other Slate Falls community members in an 180 km walk for prescription drug abuse awareness two weeks ago. We made memories to last a lifetime and I did my share of crying and laughing. It was amazing.

 I still canoe once in a while. And I help cook for potlucks and still remember how to clean fish from last summer. Imagine that! 

 I’m really tired a lot of the time and jump every time someone bangs on the door. Or when the phone rings. Or when someone gasps or yells my name.

Did I mention I’m tired? 

But I have lots of stories to last for many years and memories to savor someday when I won’t have think about the phone ringing or jump when someone yells through my doorway.

And I’ll probably smile and wish it all back.

I don’t want to forget

11 Wednesday Jan 2012

Posted by in nursing, slate falls, the wilderness

≈ 5 Comments

Jesus,

I don’t ever want to forget.

Never let me forget how you have made my life and called it good. Never let me look back and say you didn’t care–because you do. Or say you never blessed me–because you did.

Snow squeaking, lungs on fire, with sunshine splashing across white, making it flash.

Gray hair falling over her face as she leans on the table, steadying herself, stretching to see over the piece of cardboard curtain. “It was just like God threw a thousand diamonds across the lake yesterday.” Yes. Yes. Just like that.

Medications and laughter and Glen at the coffee table, poking his head in my office to tease me. Those blasted combinations on the filing cabinet that always get stuck.

Lost lab coolers and broken fax machines that never get fixed. Housemates that change every 5 weeks. Pregnancy tests and blood work.

Chopping wood with my red axe.

Kneeling over the fish net, one hand pinching between the eyes, the other with the silver nail, pushing the nylon away from the scales without tearing.

I build an alter with all of it.

But it’s not just those things that I want to remember and never forget.

Let me remember the late nights. The cancelled planes. The aching heart moments. The moments when I have to say no and the phone clicks down hard.

I know I will want to remember those too some day.

I will want to remember how I didn’t know what I was doing or what was the best thing to say. I will remember how sometimes I felt so frustrated because I felt helpless to change things. I will remember how some days I did the wrong thing and some days I did exactly what I should have.

And when I remember it all let me never say it was not good.

Love your very own,

Esta

Creeks

08 Thursday Dec 2011

Posted by in canoeing, the wilderness

≈ 7 Comments

 

This picture was taken this summer on a canoe trip that left us lost for an entire day, going over all the wrong portages and paddling the wrong creeks in the hot sun. 

Life Lesson of 2011 Meets Picture. Sometimes I need aesthetics like I need salt and vinegar chips on a road trip.

Visual Heartprints

01 Thursday Dec 2011

Posted by in nursing, slate falls, the wilderness

≈ 8 Comments

Up here I don’t take many pictures. 

Today I offer you a tiny handful. My favorites, not choosen because they are terribly good, but because each of them makes me sigh a little and all hold threads of why I truly love this life.

From the Front Yard in Fall

From the Front Yard in Winter 

Every Morning Smiles

 

Out the Livingroom Window

Little Matty saying “Kokum”

Home

Standing in a wild ocean life

15 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by in nursing, realized dreams, the wilderness

≈ 34 Comments

I am not a warm beach person.

I’m not a sun tanning, flip-flops with a cup of iced lemonade, fun in the sun, let’s just have a party here and play beach volley ball for the rest of the day type of person.

I’m a cold beach person.

I like my life the best when the icy spray whips a bit hard on the cheeks and you have to pull on a sweater and wear sturdy shoes because the rocks are sharp.

It is then I feel the most alive.

I like my ocean mixed with a little wildness. Actually, a lot of wildness.

And I like my life the exact same way.

I never want to get to the place were my biggest worry is what I’m going to make for Sunday potluck or if the scrapbook party I planned on Thursday is too much on the schedule, you know, with prayer meeting and getting spring cleaning done.

I never want my life to be totally comfortable.

I want more. I want more like the gospel is more of men in ragged clothes than starched collars and more of camels going through needles than systematic theology.

I want wind that is bigger than little me and great blue waves that I can barely stand up against and grey mist that reminds me I can’t do life on my own and sharp rocks that show where I am walking is where most people decided to take the detour.

It is then when I feel most alive.

I want to live a cold ocean life wherever I am. 

Yes, the 2000 dollar car repair bill bites the cheeks and the lack of sleep whips at the body and the cold, the real winter cold, is finally making my teeth chatter when I step outside. Yes, I feel like I am very little and very underqualified for almost everything I am doing.

30 hours of being a bona fide prison guard in one weekend is a little new for a 21-year old menno chick.

 Running around all week straddling nurse, medical driver, receptionist, babysitter, and wood-chopper leaves aching, swollen feet by friday night.

And I have another 12 hour night shift just starting. This time as a security guard at the clinic.

But I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I am standing in a wild ocean life because it is then I feel the most alive.

What makes you feel more alive than anything else?

Get in the car! Get in the car NOW!

29 Thursday Sep 2011

Posted by in friends, laughter, Scary experiences, the wilderness

≈ 6 Comments

It was on the last drive back from a weekend road trip.

There were three of us and for a girl who drives thousands of miles alone, I was soaking it in.

It was late and there had been only miles Canadian bush for the last long while as we talked, and the darkness pushed in on the headlights. Suddenly the temperature gauge shot up to red and we pulled up along the narrow shoulder, me inwardly groaning at yet another car problem.

Because of previous vehicle issues that trip, I knew that we needed to wait until the car cooled down enough that I could add coolant to the radiator, since for various reasons too complicated for here, it was disappearing rather unnaturally.

So we waited in the dark, Teresa, Paula and I, with our red emergency lights flashing slow across the empty road. We talked and talked and it wasn’t anything about the newest trend in skirts. I know I’ll always remember sitting in the inky darkness, feeling my eyes mist, realizing how deep our stories run.

One semi roared past and that was all, besides the empty asphalt and inky pines.

After about 30 minutes I though the engine was probably cool enough and grabbed my jug of antifreeze. The weeds were high alongside the ditch and everything was silence and very black.

“I’m going to get out. I’m going to face my fear” Paula said, opening the door and coming out with me. Her voice was as determined as it was brave and I was so thankful for someone standing beside me.

I leaned under the hood, fiddling with the radiator cap, folding up a sweater around it so it wouldn’t scald me if the pressure was still high. My back was turned from the road, as I pulled this and wiggled that.

Paula stood in the headlights, watching me.

The breeze was cool on my hands and softly rustled the brush in the ditch below. I was just about to open the cap, leaning far to one side in case it shot hot liquid, when Paula’s voice shouted fear.

“Get in the car! Get in the CAR! GET IN THE CAR NOW!”

I didn’t turn around. Her voice sounded like coagulated terror and I lunged for the door. My skirt got caught in the weeks and my mind raced, wondering when I would feel something grab me from the darkness. I fell into the car and slammed the door, heart leaping against my rib cage.“What is it?”

She pointed through the slit bellow the raised hood.

There, on the road, behind where we had just been standing, were three wolves.

They had slipped up without a sound and stood there, eyes glinting in the darkness.

I’ve never seen wolves in the wild. I never care to see them that close again. Even now, I get shivers just writing it.

Finally, after staring us down, they slunk off and we, still shaken, tried to decide what to do. The car was still out of coolant, the hood was still up, and the jug of antifreeze was still sitting where I left it.

 

It was very very very scary.

I for one, was very glad Paula warrior-faced the darkness and saved my rear end from getting chomped on.

The End.

Photo credit

180 hours in 50 days

04 Thursday Aug 2011

Posted by in canoeing, friends, laughter, nursing, slate falls, the wilderness

≈ 7 Comments

“Take care, kid”, he says. Worry wrinkles crease between his eyes.

“I’ll try”, I answer and walk out of the gas bar.

It makes me feel little.

I’m the girl covered in grease, pulled up at the rest station with the car hood up, clothes sticking to her back, and yes, that is a tattooed biker helping her diagnose that strange noise under the front axle.

He had a nice tattooed wife, although at that point I wouldn’t have cared if he was alone, wore an eye patch, and carried a 44 mag, as long as he offered to help.

In the last 50 days I’ve driven over 180 hours—70 of those hours alone.

In reality, I only suffered two significant breakdowns, at least car related, which is almost a lifetime record.

I guess God isn’t really calling me to be a mechanic, or marry one, like I had begun to suspect.

50 days ago I was leaving Slate Falls, while the rain filled the potholes, and I prayed to make it out without getting stuck.

Since then I managed to graduate, feel the Mississippi heat, sip sweet tea in Virginia, canoe the Ontario wilds, stick my toes in the pacific, and hike the Idaho Mountains.

Possibly I’ve been home a total of 14 days. I’m not exactly sure.

Now, 50 days later, I am packing again for Slate Falls. (yes, indeed)

This time for at least 6 months.

Guess what?

The emotions in the last 50 days are even more varied. (no, duh)

Guess what else?

I think that is okay.

This month has been insane with learning to love all the ups and downs and “yes, Lords”.

 More than anything I want to be dramatic in my determination to grow, even if it means loosing all the answers and the things I protect myself with.

And if God takes that to mean leaving me stranded on the road by myself or calling me to work in the far, cold north for a while, than so be it.

If that didn’t make any sense, just leave it.

I tried to quit coffee cold turkey yesterday and this morning woke up to realize the great stupidity of such a thing, translated into subtitles by a throbbing headache.

So much for all my haughty snides about coffee addicts.

Next thing you know I’ll have to wean myself down to one energy drink a day, sipped while laying in a tanning bed and reading Karen Kingsbury.

All’s fair in Love and Loud Opinions.

My side of the lake or tunnel or world or whatever

19 Thursday May 2011

Posted by in canoeing, nursing, slate falls, the wilderness

≈ 12 Comments

Maybe if I had time to worry about the new look in headbands and how much I jogged last week, I would. And things would be different.

There I would be. Chic and trim, jogging with a vintage tie back holding my tousled hair from caressing my rosy cheeks.

Then I would go home to write long entries in my red journal on the beautiful analogies of life and how the sun shone though the daffodils like gold and the newest relationship drama.

No daffodils here.

And my red journal sits untouched while life writes all over me and it’s not in calligraphy either.

Maybe if things were different I would have time to type out blog posts and take pictures, like I want to.

Instead I drink copious amounts of coffee and occasionally wonder how long I will live.

I worry about missing blood work and the med cooler that blew off the dock and running 5 different errands while trying to find the high-risk prenatal who just disappeared and meet the plane on time.

I almost run over the police with the medical truck on the way. And then the tire goes flat.

I feel so strangely disconnected from 95% of my friends.

Sometimes I check Facebook and everywhere there are pictures of new couples , and people bantering back and forth via wall posts and the trail of status’s buzzing about coffee shops, v.ball games, and the weather.

And I feel like I’m peering down a long tunnel, trying to remember what was on the other side.

This side of the tunnel is nice, mind you, and I have no problems filling my days with unique little dramas.

Like flushing an entire toothpaste tube down the toilet.

No lie.

The Amish missionary had to take the whole toilet off its base and turn it upside-down to get the delinquent thing out.

Now people ask if I’ve always tried saving water by brushing my teeth in unlikely places.

And the ice left, finally.  

So there are things like canoeing, fishing, falling in the lake,

and getting hooks stuck in my head.

         

Campfires under the moon and outdoor tea which I drink by the pints, along with my coffee and too much sugar.

And smoked duck. There is smoked duck in heaven, surely.

Though this is not heaven, and everyday I am reminded of how beautiful people can be—and yet how far we can fall into the blackness.

And how mangled lives get when souls are empty–how broken their bodies.

And I fall in love with what my life has been and what it is now. What else can one do, you know, when the contrast is so stark?

There are children all over the world starving and mothers dying too young and floods and earthquakes and rancid TV shows and most of us know heartache without taking a college course on grief.

The worse I see the world, the more I am determined to remain in love with my life.

Not just the moon on the lake and the wind in my hair moments—but the mornings when I wake up exhausted from the bad dream and the afternoons when there are too many kids yelling in one exam room.

There is so little hope to go around these days.

No one seems to be happy.

I have hope.

And that in and of itself gives me reason to be happy.

Even if I cannot remember the last time I cared if my eyebrows looked nice or worried that I’d offended someone in a texting conversation.

Ice, needles, and bannock

01 Friday Apr 2011

Posted by in laughter, nursing, realized dreams, slate falls, the wilderness

≈ 8 Comments

Is it possible to change so much in three weeks? Because, you know, if my heart had a mirror I don’t know if I would recognize it.

And it seems strange, because this is not new to me—this cold, this bannock, this sound of a bush plane, these BP cuffs and insulin needles.

I arrived it Slate Falls, Ontario on March 15th, with 2000km and three hours of icy logging roads behind me.

Hours after I got here the community lost power and that night I threw up all over a strangers maroon carpet. By morning my stomach had been turned inside out. The next day, lying weak under the covers, I felt very alone and knew there was no going back, and cried and then laughed.

I’m glad there was no going back, even though the chicken in me whimpered, curled up there in the chilly bedroom.

This just feels so right.

I can’t even tell you why.

Except that when I stand in the dawn light, and see the lake stretching white, white, and the wood smoke laying across the pines, held low by the icy air, I can breathe deep.

And everyone laughs—the kids when they wiggle my crooked nose and the adults when I trip over things and spill tea all over the floor and try to speak Ojibway or take their blood pressure.  And I can join them.

Working at the clinic has been like discovering a part of me I lost. Through the urban healthcare education I had begun to wonder how my earthy soul was going to survive the 0800 meds, the white walls, and the schedule, schedule, schedule of unit life.

This, this is what I wanted when I started my first semester.

 When treating patients is more than following a Doctors order and a Kardex and you chat with them about their fish nets, and your assessment skills are suddenly your lifeline.

I love treating a child for an ear infection one day, giving him a ride to school the next, and drinking tea with his grandma two days later.

 I love having a tiny gravel airstrip be the focus of planning your day. When is the plane coming? Who is on it? Who is leaving? What blood work/mail/packages do we need to send out?  I love meeting it, standing in the cold with my moose hide mitts, waiting for the red mail bag.

 Most of my friends ask about loneliness and the isolation.
 
 Yes, there are moments when I would love to talk or hang out with my friends in the south. I get horrible late hours of feeling like I dropped off the face of the earth and no one cares.

 

 But I am surrounded by people. People who make me laugh as well as want to cry.
 
 I think one of my biggest struggles is actually being able to just get away and be alone–which is why I haven’t had the time to blog or tell all my stories.
 
There has been no time for writing—because there has been too much living.
 
Even now I am holding a squirming baby, watching moose dumplings bubble, drinking Red Rose, and typing with two fingers.
 
 From where winter still is,
 
I thank you friends for caring.
 
 I need to run.