Of clouds and sticks and panty droppers....

Fishing day!!
I'm on vacation, and although I've been known to enjoy a good massage, everyone knows I'm not much of a girlie-girl, so a day at the spa getting my hair and nails done is not on my agenda.  Besides, my nails are too short for a proper manicure, I'm not good at planning ahead enough to make an appointment anywhere, and I look rather silly driving up to the Aveda Spa in my truck.

Sunrise from my porch.

  First rule of fishing:  "Cloud cover is beneficial to catching more fish."
So I was happy that the clouds were in the sky.

I'm driving toward Poudre Canyon and the mountains west of Ft. Collins thinking "go clouds!"  I catch fish pretty well on a sunny day, so today ought to be awesome.

The view overlooking the river from Highway 14 toward the south, up at Moraine Park, just east of the fish hatchery. My truck looks much better parked in front of this view than in front of Aveda Spa.

After doing the "before" selfie, confident that many fish are just waiting to be caught, I clammer down the hill to the river and set up my rig.

I fish the first hole, and start working my way upstream to the next, and then the next, and then the next.

There are some more rules that I've learned fly-fishing.

1) "If you don't have a strike by the third cast, you are not presenting the right fly."  This rule can be a pain because when using two flies at the same time, and then changing one of them after every third cast, you spend a lot of time standing in the river pulling on fishing line trying not to drop things into the river.

2) "Watch the bugs that are flying around you to see what the fish are eating."  Ok, on this cloudy and cool day, there are only very small grey bugs in the air that I can barely see.  That means if I match them, I will be tying on very tiny bugs that I can barely see, and my hands are already cold after only 1/2 hour on the river.....so I spend a lot of time standing in the river trying not to drop things.

3) "If you don't see fish rising, then you need to tie on a double nymph rig and fish below the surface." So.... I don't see any fish rising.  I give up on the small grey bugs, and start tying on small nymph flies while standing in the water trying not to drop things.

Did I tell you it was cold?

So, now I'm crashing through the brush to the next hole, holding my rod high so I don't snag it on anything, 

wondering where the fish are because it's fall and the browns should be spawning, 

and that means they should be hungry, 

and that means they should be eating indiscriminately, 

and that means that I should have had at least ONE strike, 

and really, I should have caught something by now, 

and hopefully there's not a bear near here,

and now there's a perfect hole, but there's a large downed tree in my way and I'm on the wrong side of the river,

and wow!  a bald eagle swoops down out of the tree right above my head and flies off across the river.

It obviously had its eye on the same hole that I did.....which means there are fish somewhere!

Lunchtime.

Well?

Did I catch anything in that first three hours?

Read on.

 Refreshed after a sandwich and a can of Mama's Little Yellow Pills (thank you, Oskar Blues), I find a new promising spot on the river, and am ready to go at it again.

Colder, bundled up quite a bit more, but still pretty confident; can't you tell?

 

See the smooth water in front of those rocks?  Fish tend to be right in front of those rocks on the edge of the rippling water just waiting for food to float by.

Big browns who are spawning and eating anything that happens to float by.

Brings to mind another rule of fly fishing: "Cast your fly just above the edge of the rock and let it drift through the hole; you're sure to catch a fish."

 

Well, apparently not today.

Alright, so maybe I'm a little frustrated at my lack of catching fish.

Time to take a break and remember my favorite saying of fishing and the most important rule of all:

"Standing in the river waving a stick."  

It's actually the title of a book written by a famous fly-fisherman, and it explains perfectly the zen moment when you realize that it really is about being outside and one with nature. It' my go-to saying when I have days like today.

Now it's starting to rain, and once again, I've worked my way upstream from hole to hole to hole, not having any luck.  

Time is running short on me.

Screw the zen.

I have a new secret weapon.......the panty dropper.

I'm breaking the rules here.

There is not a single very large pink foam bug flying around in the air close to me.

The grasshoppers probably all died a couple of weeks ago.

There's no finesse when throwing this bad girl on the water.

I really should be offended by the name, but couldn't help buying the fly thinking maybe it would bring good luck. 

And wouldn't you know, even though I didn't hook any of them on the line, within ten minutes, several fish in the same hole eagerly rose and snatched at the panty dropper floating on the surface of the water.

I'll be fishing with her more often.

And yes, I caught one fish today right before lunch.  A big beautiful brown that was at least 18 inches in length.

Picture proof?  Nope, because I couldn't imagine that was the only fish I would catch all day.

You'll just have to believe me.  :)

The NICU

    I came across this vignette I wrote many years ago.  It is not cheery, and can be difficult to read. The circumstances have been changed to fictionalize the scenario, but those of us in healthcare have come across this situation far too often.  I only wish we could help those who need it most.  Think of this as an extended poem.

                                                                    

                                                                         NICU

     

     There’s a baby in the nursery, only 10 days old, the unfortunate victim of life’s circumstances at his very young age.  Once again, like so many others we see, he is the helpless and innocent victim of multiple events of which he has no control.  

     He lays on his back in the NICU surrounded by a mass of blankets.  His too thin legs are curled under him, the skin falling off in folds.  His skin is so dry that it flakes off in large pieces as if he had lain under the sun for too many hours on a hot beach.  The wires of the heart monitor are draped across his chest and abdomen.  Wrinkles form around his elbows and his wrists, as well as his lower legs below the knees.  At first, the soft spot on his head feels large and the skin of his skull is draped over his brain like a tablecloth.  His eyes are sunk into his face and he truly has the wizened look of a monkey that we sometimes joke about with the newborn babies.  His lips are dry and cracked.  His belly protrudes, and veins course across his abdomen.  

     The cardiorespiratory monitor is set on silent and records the rhythm of his heart and his breathing which are steady as is his blood pressure.  We await the results of his initial labs; amazingly, his kidneys are functioning ok and his sodium is basically normal.  We know he is dehydrated, but we can look at him and know that; it is obvious. We don’t need the blood tests to tell us that is so.  

     He was born to a mother who had been doing meth during her pregnancy, and although her drug screen was negative for anything else, she was probably addicted to several substances.  He came four weeks early and to a hospital where they are used to seeing only the wealthy and the white.  Despite not feeding terribly well, and despite the high risk of developing withdrawal in response to the substances his mother ingested, they elected to send him home on day of life 2.  

     His grandmother offered to take custody of him as his mother did not have custody of her other two children and CPS deemed her unworthy of taking him home.  

     He came to our NICU so dehydrated that he could no longer get up the energy to cry when they placed the IV in his foot after several attempts in his scalp and hands.  He had copious diarrhea to the point where his little rectum was prolapsing with every bowel movement.  We know that if he didn’t come into our hospital within the next 48 hours or so, his kidneys would have failed and he would have died.  

     His grandmother seemed appropriately concerned and stayed with him most every minute of the days and nights, and yet we couldn’t help but wonder how he got into this condition.  

     Did she not recognize that he had not the energy to cry for his next meal?

     Did the meds she used to help her own sleep prevent her from waking and caring for him in the night?   

    Why was she on such a powerful antidepressant and antipsychotic?  

     Aren’t the sins of the parent reflected in the child and thus the grandchild?   

     Had he also been exposed to toluene, or some other caustic substance in the methamphetamines that had affected the lining and absorption of his gut?  

     Was he withdrawing from any of many unknown substances in such a manner that his mother never had to experience because she would not give up her habit although she had gladly given up the boy?  

     Was it his fault that he was born several weeks early partly because he was malnourished in the womb because of her addiction?  

     How does that affect the development of his brain?  

     How does it affect the development of his normal emotions?

  

     Are the days he spends in the NICU really going to be the best days of his life?

     We ask these questions far too often as we work caring for the underserved of our community.  

     We see these situations commonly.  

     And the people we need to reach the worst are the most unreachable.  

     We only hope that we can keep some of these innocent children out of the path of their own destruction.  

     We also know that more often than not we cannot and they will end up in the same circumstances themselves someday.

Climbing Mt Bierstadt: yeah it's over 14,000 feet high!

Danielle called me up one afternoon.
"Do you want to go hiking?"
"Sure," I replied, always game for a hiking adventure.  "What do you have in mind?"
"I don't know," she said.  "I was hoping you would know of somewhere."

I thought for a few minutes. Last time we went hiking, she got all uptight about the "WARNING!  Mountain Lions!" sign at the trailhead.  Despite the fact we had a 100+ pound Rotweiller with us, and despite the fact we passed a herd of deer calmly laying in the grass under trees, she was a little nervous about a big cat jumping out from behind a rock and getting us. She informed me that the dog was no help because she would just be dead after the lion attacked her.  Then the lion would start in on us.
However, Danielle does like hiking, and she had already mentioned that she and Kelsey were planning on hiking the tallest 14,000 ft mountain in Colorado; Mt. Elbert.  That gave me some inspiration.

"Let's do a 14'er," I told her.
When you're in Colorado, the first step is knowing the proper lingo for climbing tall mountains.

"Mt. Bierstadt is supposed to be the easiest one, and we can get there from Boulder the same day."

Hiking 14'ers is a bit like giving birth.
1) It's really not very fun when you're in the middle of it...and
2) it's easy to forget how exceedingly difficult is once some time goes by...
and
3) it gives you a great sense of accomplishment once you are successfully done.

     So, we start off thinking we are all hot stuff.  We get to hike DOWN for the first mile of the 7.2 mile hike, and that means it's pretty easy.  We look at the pretty wildflowers, we laugh, and we're entertained by a truly Colorado sight;  a group of 20 somethings drinking Bud-Lite and openly smoking weed before they start the real ascent.

Because you know, smoking weed is basically legal in Colorado, and who doesn't want to get their buzz on before they start up to 14,000 feet?

     Then we start to seriously go up.  See all those little people in the picture?  The tiny dots on the right of the pic? They form a straight line because whoever originally went up this mountain decided that straight up was better than forming the trail with switchbacks, which although may be longer, is much easier on the legs.

And we continue to go seriously up.

Kelsey finds her inner hiking zone and marches forward at a steady pace; a pace faster than us!

I'm starting to remember that I'm now almost 50 years old and that I haven't done this in probably 10 years, and this is REALLY hard, and must be much harder now because I'm almost 50 years old, and what did I think I was doing?

And wait! Who is that woman who must be in her early 60's running down the mountain with only a fanny pack and a water bottle? We saw many people running down the mountain, making us believe that they must have also run up.  However, we realized we never did see a single person running up. Except I firmly believe that this woman DID run up.  She looked tougher than all of us, and I would bet sans alcohol and pot to boot.

 Danielle the sprinter, who finishes her swimming races in usually one minute tops, is now forced to slog up this giant slope for a couple of hours.  She wasn't chattering about mountain lions, but she sure was chattering about how hard it was!

After the really long, difficult straight up slope, this was the final ascent.  People are always so little when they climb mountains.  See them way up there?

Party at the top!

Obviously a lot of people and their dogs spend their Sundays climbing 14'ers.

Danielle and Kelsey got to sign their first logbook.


Danielle found some reserve energy.


She even found enough reserve energy to photobomb Kelsey.




















We did what everyone does at the top of a 14'er in Colorado.
We enjoyed the lunches that we had packed, although the sandwiches were thoroughly smushed. But the water in our bottles was still cold. Another secret is that Coloradoans may not make sandwiches every day, but you've got to have a sandwich to eat at the top of a mountain.

The Bud-Lite drinking, pot smoking crew made it to the top after us, donned their birthday party hats, and invited everyone at the top to sing "Happy Birthday!" to one of their group who was celebrating her 22nd birthday by climbing a 14'er.  I might be willing to guess that the cars at the top of the next 14,000 foot mountain over could hear us singing.

That would be Mt. Evans, and those people chose to drive to the top of their 14'er and eat their sandwiches, drink their water, ?smoke their pot?, out of the luxury of their back seat.

I'll bet they didn't share our same sense of accomplishment.

Congratulations, Danielle and Kelsey on your first 14,000 ft mountain!  You guys were awesome!
Good luck on Mt. Elbert in a few weeks.  Remember, that extra 400 feet or so will seem like an extra mile.

The Blog is Back!

The blog is back!
As I turn the corner from what has been a most difficult year, the creative juices are flowing again.
I wrote this poem and dedicate it to every woman who has lost track of herself somehow.....

"Healing"

Slowly,
So slowly
She emerges
blinking in the light
That has become so unfamiliar

Petals fold back
One by one
Sometimes catching her unawares
That laugh!
Where did that come from?
So spontaneous it was out before she could stop it

Her mind returning
Her face uplifted once again to the warming sun
New ideas forming
New thoughts
A creative self put away on a now dusty shelf and almost forgotten

Who is this creature?
The knowing is there
Buried,
Suppressed,
Pushed out of the light

She emerges
The features become more clear
As the mud settles to the bottom of the pond
An acknowledgement
Of one she knew before

She's older
More mature
Still learning the new ways
A celebration of the old
And the new

Can she forgive herself for the years lost?
They were valuable in their own right
A lesson
To herself
To impart on those that follow

Come back to the light
Welcome its warmth
Let it enfold you in its arms
It will heal
And leave you calm in the knowledge of yourself