HOW WE GOT HERE--Ti

I’d been on this island before, though it took me a long time to remember when. The “first” time I approached the west beach from the water with my not-yet-husband, it looked familiar. The old road and little bridge were over there, that tree was here…but wasn’t it farther back from the water? The shoreline had eroded—a lot--several hundred feet in one place. But yes, I’d been here before.

When I was very young, my father brought me here with Lummi and other tribal elders to look at shell middens. The middens are thick piles of discarded shells—the result of decades—centuries—of the tribes coming to the shoreline to gather shellfish. At one time, people were forbidden to build homes over the middens because of their historic, tribal and archeological value. My dad and his friends were trying to locate as many of the middens as they could in the hopes that folks wouldn’t build houses directly on top of them.

I remember the midden on our beach because one of the elders showed me how camas (Camassia quamash) had been planted near where the shellfish were gathered. When families returned to this shore to gather shellfish, the camas would be right there too, making gathering food a bit easier. The ten-foot-thick shell deposits are still here and so is the camas. However, the shoreline is eroding back so fast that I have been gathering the camas and planting it in my garden.

I’ve known my husband for a long time, though we were not each other’s type when we were younger. But we got older and I suppose we started thinking, “Hey, you’re not so bad after all.”

By the time he finally convinced me to marry him and move to the island I was decidedly not a young starry-eyed bride. And he was no Prince Charming with a castle. He had to offer: (1) a creaky old, dark, and uninsulated building on an island with no ferry service; and (2) an 11-year-old daughter. Oh joy, at an age when most women are thinking about retirement, I am about to move back out into the sticks and be a stepmom.

But still, I said yes.

HOW WE GOT HERE--Kristi

The Wild Woman’s Whitewater Rafting Adventure was an annual event with my group of single mom friends. We would head out to a remote, pristine little Shangri-La located in the North Cascades mountain range in Washington State, approximately forty miles south of the Canadian boarder as the crow flies. There we would raft the main river over Father’s Day weekend when the water was running high and we knew our kids would be with their dads.

During these trips, we usually encountered an adventure or two, like the time one friend in her short cut off jeans and cowboy boots attracted the attention of one too many cowboys. Or when I fell out of the raft during a class four rapid, was sucked into a hole and saw God. We somehow always managed to survive with only minor scrapes and more than a few hangovers. But one year was different.

That was the year, after drinking one-too-many chocolate martinis, we all decided to pile into the red jeep and see what sort of trouble we could get into at the local cowboy bar. And that’s where I met Bill, a quiet, handsome, long-haired hippie; the future love of my life. He had uncharacteristically come to that notorious bar to hear a band he liked, and was casually standing in the corner sipping a beer, when he caught my eye. There was something quiet and gentle about his demeanor that appealed to me after years of being married to someone who was not. Plus I had vowed to be the first “Wild Woman” out on the dance floor so I asked the quiet hippie to dance. Or, rather, I dared him to.

“Are you going to stand there all night drinking, or do you want to dance?” was my now-famous opening line. Why he didn’t run for the hills is anyone’s guess, but dance, we did, and then we talked for hours. In the following weeks, we began a steady correspondence, back-and-forth visits, and a cross-mountain romance.

Three months later, Bill was living with me and the girls in Seattle. And to this day, we’re still not sure why we clicked so well. We just did. The girls loved him, I loved him, and he loved us back. We wanted to build a life together, and somehow, I knew that we would.

But Bill did not love Seattle and often missed his valley home. His passion was nature, sustainable building (he was a carpenter by trade), and living a simple life. My passion was my career, my kids, and maintaining my complicated life. I had no idea how to make it all work. But I had just started an outreach campaign around a documentary on voluntary simplicity, and the idea of downsizing my “stuff”, working less, getting out of the city, and having more time with my kids was increasingly attractive. Bill encouraged me to explore where that road might go. He also maintained his home in the valley: a tiny trailer on 30 acres with an amazing view, where we would regularly visit. I have always been a city girl, but each time we went I felt a little more comfortable with the primitive lodgings, wide open skies, and miles of mountains and woods. I knew Bill was hoping we could all move to the valley someday but I wasn’t ready.

At the same time, my life in the city was becoming more and more untenable. I had a new boss who wanted me to go from conducting large, impactful outreach campaigns to writing her personal memos. I had to refinance my home to buy out my ex- husband, and was now living beyond my means. My bills were piling up, the freeway was always clogged, and my kids were in daycare (or school) ten hours a day. Traffic, stress, and guilt began to work their magic until one weekend in the valley, as Bill and I were sipping coffee in the sun on a bed of warm pine needles, and taking in his incredible view, I finally said, “Okay, let’s do it. It’s time to move.” Had I known what I was getting into, I might never have uttered those words. But looking before I leap had never been my strong suit, and leap I did.

Three months later we had sold my home, quit our jobs, negotiated a new parenting plan with my ex-husband, got married, and bought a tiny 1904 log cabin on several wooded acres in our valley paradise. I was ecstatic! Not only was I getting away from my ex-husband, tyrannical boss, high housing costs, and mind-numbing traffic, I was also living in a beautiful environment with low over head, a wonderful man, and more time with my girls.

Bill was thrilled to be home and found work easily in his trade. I had some savings after selling my home, and could afford to take a little time to figure out what I was going to do with myself. My youngest daughter, Rose, was four years old when we moved, and had been in full time daycare since she was one. I was thrilled to have the time to get to know my kids again.

That first summer, Emily, my eldest (age 9) spent the summer with her father in Seattle, the youngest, because of her age, spent that first summer with me and Bill in the valley. Em came home and started public school in the fall, while Rose went to the local Montessori. There was no getting up at 6:00 a.m. to hustle them to daycare, no long commute in terrible traffic, and no stressful job. Em had a 10 minute bus ride to school, which picked her up in front of our door. Rose went to half day Montessori and spent the rest of the day with me. Bill worked and earned just enough money for us to get by. We were happy, in love, and life was good.

In the Beginning -- Ti

IN THE BEGINNING--Ti

The streets on our end of town flooded every winter. When the winter storms and high tides came the river would run over its banks and we’d row up and down our street in a Crayola®-green boat. All the junk under our houses would float out—garbage, bits of wood, beer bottles, along with an occasional dead cat. After the flood subsided our houses would smell damp and moldy for weeks. But at least, as my mom would say, it was clean under the house.

My dad insisted that I come along with him when he went out to work on the Indian reservations along the Washington coast. Though my family is Chinese-American, my dad had many friends among the tribes. He frequently took time to help them out with carpentry projects, pouring concrete for the floor of a new shed, helping with fishing boats, mending nets and more.

While visiting friends on various reservations, we stayed in homes and house trailers with limited plumbing and not enough insulation, though I don’t remember that as being a hardship. I remember fun times, good storytelling, legends from the elders and sleeping by woodstoves glowing red. I especially remember Grandma Marie’s outhouse, got up, as she put it, “…like a cheap whore’s bedroom…” with red-and-white flocked wallpaper, lace curtains, a gold-painted toilet seat, and a heart-shaped mirror.

I also remember getting in trouble for telling my mom what Grandma Marie called her outhouse.

Every evening the cigarette butts and beer bottles would pile up on the kitchen table. The other kids would try to sneak puffs from the smoldering butts and pull sips from the bottom of beer bottles. The drunker the older folks got, the better their stories were: raven, wolf, hummingbird, whale, and bear people and my favorite, the slug people, who talked like “thissshhhhh…”.

I plotted my escape from the Washington coast: college, then big city career girl. I’d wear snappy clothes and cute shoes and work in a big building with banks of shiny elevators. However, while working as a bicycle courier in Seattle, I discovered what I really liked doing was going in and out of the buildings and riding the elevators. I had no interest in actually working in one.

Did I mention that I’m Raven Clan? Grandma Marie said I was the sort of Raven that didn’t like playing pranks on others (true) or having pranks played on her (also true) but who could endlessly play pranks on herself (all too true).

On top of it all, I was raised outside the Judeo-Christian tradition. I understand responsibility and duty, but I had to take “Bible as Literature” classes in college to understand the use of allegory in western writing. To this day I still don’t quite get the concept of “guilt”.

I have fond memories of two friends, one Irish-Catholic and the other Jewish, trying to explain guilt to me. They’d toss example after example at me and ask how I’d feel.

Them: “What if you promised someone you’d do something and you didn’t?”

Me: “I’d contact them right away and then do whatever I was supposed to do.”

Them: “No, you’d feel GUILTY!

…and so on until we were all helpless with laughter. The end result is that I now also associate the concept of guilt with good times, funny friends, and laughter.

I went off to college in Hawaii, which was the place most opposite the town I grew up in that I could imagine. Blessedly, I looked like just about everyone else in Hawaii—just another Asian-looking girl with long hair. It was great.

And then I got married. At 19. And moved right back to the coast with my husband, who always wanted to live in Washington State.

I married young, divorced young, finished college with a Communications degree and did the wandering around looking for myself thing. I worked dozens of different jobs, waitressing, cleaning houses, lived alone in a cabin for a couple of winters (house sitting for friends), cooked on fishing boats, delivered sailboats, wrote computer code, taught middle and high school, worked for a type house, a newspaper, a TV station, a photo lab, a science museum. I stayed single as my friends married, bought homes, had kids. I hit the glass ceiling, took two years off, and went back to college for my Master’s degree.

All the strands of my life came together when I went to work at KCTS, the PBS affiliate in Seattle.

PBS and NPR were the place to go to work when I was in college. Public broadcasting, public voice, no commercials, experimental programming, educational television were the wave of the future. The edgiest programs were on PBS: Sesame Street, Big Blue Marble, NOVA.

Things had changed by the time I got to KCTS—PBS had become mainstream and the “educational” mission was blurring as new technologies flooded the schools. Nonetheless, KCTS was riding high on the success of Bill Nye the Science Guy and it was a kick to travel to PBS conferences and be working for the station with the cool program.

I met Kristi at KCTS where she created outreach projects for various broadcast programs. I admired her work, and we worked well together though we were just about complete opposites. For starters, I’d thrived at The Evergreen State College, she’d hated it there. I never wanted kids or a house, Kristi wanted both and was a great mom with a great house. Funniest of all were our many “east-west moments” when Kristi would say something perfectly logical to her and I’d think that she’d just flown in from Venus. And vice versa.

But Kristi is the idea gal and I am the “make it so gal”. If you need 1000 plastic eyeballs by 5:00 PM, call me. If you need to know what to do with 1000 plastic eyeballs, call Kristi.

Kristi was going through a divorce and I tried not to listen to her heated conversations with her lawyer, and soon-to-be-ex, even though our cubicles were right on top of one another.

After her divorce, she came back from a trip across the mountains grinning, saying she’d asked a ponytailed guy to dance and thereafter she traveled across the mountains to be with him.

Abruptly, Kristi’s job changed. She went from running big projects to being a glorified secretary and she was clearly not happy. Her ponytailed guy had moved west to be with her, but suddenly, as she put it, their five-year plan became a five-month plan and then a five-minute plan: she married her guy, and poof, moved to the remote valley where her new husband had lived.

In contrast, my job was getting more interesting and the diverse paths of my life had finally merged: visual and graphic arts, education and writing. I was experimenting with early versions of streaming video, trying to figure out ways to use the technology in the classroom. I was working with youth media and helping emerging producers get their work on the air. When I mentioned where I worked, people said, “Cool! We love PBS!”

The only thing I wasn’t doing was any work of my own.

In the Beginning -- Kristi

IN THE BEGINNING--Kristi

In the beginning, I was a basically “normal” person. I was raised by working class parents in Portland, Oregon, who respected education and encouraged me to get a degree. As Ti mentioned, I started out at the alternative Evergreen State College in Olympia, where I learned I wasn’t “alternative” enough to fit in. So I put myself through school and earned a degree in International Studies from the University of Washington. Upon graduation, I fled the country to work in remote Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Impetuous move #1. Little did I know I had just set the stage for my whole life.

After returning from the Peace Corps, I cast around for a direction and life. Finding neither, I did what many a lost woman has done before me: I got married and had kids. By the time I figured out I had picked the wrong guy (and the wrong life), I had moved back and forth across the country following my husband’s struggling career, had another child and ended up in Seattle where I finally figured out what I wanted to do when I grew up: work for Public Television. I started out as a receptionist at KCTS just to get my foot in the door. But two days after my (now ex) husband moved out I got a call from KCTS offering me the job of my dreams: Outreach and Learning Services Coordinator.

By 1997, I was a single mom with an interesting job, two young children daughters, a nice “normal” home in an upscale neighborhood of Seattle, and lots of fun, educated, left-of-center urban friends that looked and acted like me. A pretty average urban life.

My work as an outreach coordinator creating public education and outreach campaigns for PBS documentary productions was rewarding. I got to do meaningful work and work with cool people like Ti, who, despite our many differences, was a great cubical mate. She was quiet; I was not. She worked odd hours; I punched the clock. She had a fish tank and art and other cool things on her desk while I could barely find mine under piles of paper and files.

Ti was Chinese-American with great stories to tell about her family. I was an American mutt with few stories to tell about mine. Her work ethic and organizational skills were incredible while mine were okay, but not great. I often would sit in awe as she effortlessly moved between the three computer screens sitting on her desk, each with a different project, while I struggled to even find my current project in the pile of poo that was my desk. We mostly did our separate work but would occasionally collaborate on projects together, which we did well. Casual conversation, on the other hand, was dicey. Example:

Kristi (making light conversation and obviously wasting time): “So, Ti, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?”

Ti (rapidly typing away): “Why are you asking me this?”

Kristi: “Ummm, just curious.”

Ti: “No.” Conversation ends.

I remember the time I laughingly told Ti my philosophy on life, which had been passed down to me by my anti-authority mother. “It’s easier to say I’m sorry than to get permission.” I chortled. Ti looked at me squarely for a few moments and said, “Why would you apologize?”

“Okaaaay” I thought. Another east/west moment bites the dust.

Yet, despite these rather odd cultural moments, my life in Seattle was pretty normal. My home was tidy, my children were clean, people liked me and thought I was a nice person. I had lots of good friends. No big controversies to speak of.

How it is that I end up living in a small, dark, wood-smoke-filled log cabin in a remote mountain community where bears wander through my garden, people shoot deer in my driveway, and I develop a growing reputation as a troublemaker is… Well, that is the heart of my story, and something I’m still trying to figure out. In retrospect, I blame it all on the “Wild Women.”

PREFACE

“What happened to my wonderful life?”

Ti’s Story:

4:00 PM and it’s already dark. It’s been pouring rain and near-freezing for days. The wind is howling in from the southwest and at high tide, the surf breaks over the rocks and into the yard.

I’m scrounging deadwood for the woodstove. The woodstove, the oven, and couple of old electric heaters make a small dent in the cold in the 100-year-old, uninsulated building we live in.

The rusty wheelbarrow is piled high with deadwood and its wobbly wheel is stuck in the sucking, ankle-deep mud. Rain is dripping off my nose.

A raven peers at me and gronks. Great. Even the ravens find me funny.

I looked down at my battered blue coat and rubber boots held together with duct tape and start laughing. Sling a pole across my shoulders with buckets at either end filled with “night soil” and I’d look just like one of my old Chinese aunties.

A month ago I was meeting with library-media specialists discussing how to use streaming video in K-12 classrooms. I had a cute little city apartment, the job I’d always wanted, no debt, and the life I had wished and worked for since I was a kid.

Why was I back out in the woods? What happened to my wonderful urban life?

If there’s anyone who knows what I’m feeling, it’s Kristi, a colleague of mine from my city life. She was the ultimate urban gal to me: politically aware, passionate about the causes she believed in, well-spoken, and with the house, kids, job and life she thought she wanted. But she had fallen in love, re-married, packed up her family, left her urban life and moved to the mountains a few years before.

I called Kristi up: what happened to our wonderful lives?

Kristi’s Story:

Excellent question! By the time you called I had been living in a remote valley in North Central Washington for five years and still didn’t have the answer. Impetuous as always, I had decided over a long weekend to chuck my sanitized, rush-rush, high tech urban life in pursuit of a dream of simple country living and more time with my kids. What I got instead was anything but, because as it turns out, simple living can be very complicated…..

About the Title

Neither Kristi or I are entirely happy with the working title of our book. "Urban Gals Go Feral" is certainly funny, but not entirely accurate.

I started out living 'way...'way...'way...out in the woods and made myself over into an urban-ite, only to find myself back in the woods. Kristi, on the other hand, started out and was still a city gal when I first met her.

We're open to any other title suggestions! (ti)