call of the wild

It's almost been a month since I came to Iceland.  Though it feels like much longer, because it has been a constant stream of work and learning moments.  The dogs and I live in an austere corner of the world, where often time and electricity are forgotten. When I first got here there was no running water, but there was Wifi; which really shows the priorities of the Icelandic people. I love it.  There are 28 dogs outside, Greenland Sled Dogs, one of the most ancient breeds of dogs.  They are beautiful and mysterious and surprise me every day with their proximity to human emotion.   Though they really are ferocious as a pack and are constantly challenging the established hierarchy.  Today and many days before hence, I had to push a dog to the ground and then bite it's ear to reprimand it for a wrong-doing.  I was told on my first day here that I was the Alpha Male, the lead dog, and if the dogs ever doubted that I would have a hellish scene on my hands.  My first day I saw a dogfight and had to break it up with a shovel and some Russian curse words.  I find that speaking French is soothing to the dogs and Russian scares them. Though mostly it might be my intonation when I fumble my way through those respective languages.  Either way, every day is different and a challenge in literally being an animal trainer with no experience in such an extreme environment.  There is no longer any snow so we are doing dog trolley tours daily, but once the snow descends again on the landscape I get to tackle skiing along side the wolves again. Life is always a challenge, but the struggle unearths a much more resonant beauty.  Here are some pictures and I will post some more frequently as the adventure unfolds. Miss you all. Slobber from the arctic tundra.

MUSH?

I admit, my life is a joke. I've sucked at updating this, but as I move to Iceland in three days I think my predominant method of communication is going to be smoke signals and the occasional internet contact.  So, I'm moving to Iceland for three months to work as a dogsledding instructor for this company called Dogsled Iceland. Yeah. We will ignore the fact that I don't know how to dogsled. So I'm trading in life in the tropics on a boat for the artic tundra, a couple Icelandic guys and 30 sled dogs. Seems normal right? I'm pretty sure my mother things I'm insane, but in my experience it's the crazy ideas that yield the best stories to tell at the bar.  What this company does is take tourist on dogsled tours, where the instructors ski next to the dogsled and command the dogs. We will also ignore the fact that I don't know how to ski.

My life is a shit show.

Here are a few pictures of the compound and the dogs. 6 puppies were born recently, so there are some adorable overload photos. I'll upload pictures of me falling on my ass while skiing and becoming dogsled roadkill. Phenomenal!

lollipops, axes and new sails

I'm off the Seaward and have been puttering around in Boston and Venice for the past few months. "Studying" for the GREs, my AB Sail and other general scheming in Boston and watching grown men dressed up like giant lollipops for Carnivale in Venice. Somewhere in that time I took a wilderness medicine course and Basic Safety Training (pictures below). But in two weeks I'm going down to Maryland to get on the Pride of Baltimore II, a beautiful tops'l schooner designed after the illustrious Baltimore Clippers that reigned during the war of 1812. Guns and all. It should be hilarious, and more updates will ensue once I step on her decks for...6 months. The tour will take us up into the Great Lakes for the summer and after that who knows. I'm looking into working on a Wildlife Preserve in Kenya (land wars aside), but that's too far in the future.
Which way is up? I don't get, this thing is child-proof.
My new home...

Turning Tide

I have left the Seaward and am now back in Boston before taking some classes in Woods Hole to get my AB Sail. Basically it's a piece of paper saying I'm not a total dipshit and can handle myself on a boat. But I think I need it incase I work abroad and on bigger boats. Leaving the Seaward and the west coast felt like a calm after a gale. Settling into a stillness after having been so active, it was hard to handle at first. But it helped that my mom and I went on a roadtrip in CA that resulted in a 6 hour stranding in Redwood National Forest on Thanksgiving. Nothing like a little drama and car trouble to really spice up the holidays. Surprisingly climbing the gigantor trees and reading trashy magazines was blissful and odd. I never included any real pictures from sailing and teaching so here they are, rather retrospectively, but hell that's how i roll.Teaching Navigation to Oakland High Schoolers. There were so many of them the boat was listing to port the entire sail. It it actually looks like they are paying attention, but god knows what I'm saying.
Oh the wee ones. This was taken a few seconds before one of the tunicates (think underwater squirt gun invertebrate) emptied its bellyfull of water all over the nearest child. MUCH squealing ensued.
Fog pretending it's a blanket and managing to defy gravity, while looking quite creepy.
We should be a postcard, the Ladies of Seaward. Must have strong knees.
Halloween. Complete with a bad kitty, lobster, dirty sailor, harding rock (it's a buoy) and a housewife from hell (which was me, notice the large knife).

Here's a video of sailing with the wee ones, it's pretty windy so stand away from the mic.
***Here's to the Tide turning in a new direction...

The Golden Gate Bridge by sunset. Such a beauty.

My crew, sailing on the Lynx. That's what sailors do, sail on other boats on their time off.
A passed out Dalmatian in the cockpit during one of our Education sails. All the kids came in costumes and wore then under their PFDs. This is Will, he's 5. That's actually 35 in dog years.
Getting to know the Pacific Ocean. It's pretty big, so that might take awhile.

Excuse me, sir?

So, California is kind of crazy. Working on this boat is mildly insane because we have SO many sails. Sometimes will have as many as three program sails a day which means that roughly 90 5th graders come on with about 35 parents and I'm supposed to educate them? What? Though having such a variety of students and parents is a recipe for craziness. Some highlights thus far:

1. We had a Man Overboard while it was gusting up to 40 knots in the Bay. Our Program director was in the water when the small boat flipped and we had to initiate a routine retrieval response, which really meant we threw everything that could float in the water...until we were assisted by a crazy Rastafarian who came out of no where and helped us get the small boat back once the crew member was onboard. Meanwhile the 41 fourth graders are running around and screaming "This is the BEST field trip EVER!"

2. During a boyscout education sail we did, one of the boy scouts called me Sir. Needless to say, I've stopped wearing my men's Carhart pants.

3. While teaching the ecology station on one of our ed sails, this little kid was feeling a Moon Jelly that we had caught and displayed in a bucket. He suddenly looked up at me and exclaimed "This jellyfish feels like an implant!" Holy crap, there are no words.

4. The 57 year old Vietnamese man at the laundromat proposed the other day, clearly the highlight of my stay in California.

5. And then there is always the Golden Gate bridge and San Francisco bay, both dynamic, powerful and startling every time you see them.

Pictures coming soon...

Each tack is a transition

I have failed miserably in this business of updating. But I'm turning a new leaf and trying harder this time. Much has happened since I last wrote in July. I spend the next month and a half teaching high schoolers how to sail and operate on a boat. Which was largely a joke considering most of them had no idea how to wash a dish, think abstractly or unselfishly. Well at least some of that changed. I got to pretend to be a drill Sargent and make them all do five push ups for every minute they were late to watch. Yelling is so much fun. But there was also a decent amount of hand-holding when they missed their lives of complacency, understandably. It is something new to teach kids that are only a few years younger than myself, reprimand them when they are irresponsible and also cuddle them when they need reassurance. All of those things are very foreign to me. The chief scientist once told me that all this was preparing me for motherhood. I flicked him off.
Here are some pictures, far more interesting than my rambling preamble:
After I got off the Cramer, I stalked another boat the Lettie G. Howard in the Gloucester Schooner race and then followed them on their transit down to New York City. It occurred to me that perhaps sailing on my vacation from sailing was silly, but the trip was awesome. I didn't take any pictures, I know I fail once again, but I'll try better next time.

After spending a few days in NYC and after partaking in some ruckus there, I pretty much had zero time before flying off to San Francisco to start my next job as a deckhand/educator on the schooner Seaward that does education sails for fourth and fifth graders in the SF Bay area. I somehow have the feeling that me being responsible for educating small children was perhaps a poor choice, but time will tell. Thus far, my introduction to California has been a little crazy. Getting out here was a debacle that involved my taxi breaking down on a very steep road, where i had to call AAA while the cab driver sobbed to herself and cradled a stuffed hello kitty. The boat itself if very yachty, which is off-putting for me and the crew is tiny (there are only four of us). I have the feeling I will escape often to this nearby (and by nearby i mean 30 minute walk away) internet cafe. Thus, there will hopefully be many updates and stories of how I make small children do push ups when they answer questions incorrectly. That's allowed, right?

Here's a quote I've become enamoured with: "I'm glad I did it, partly because it was well worth it, but chiefly because I shall never ever have to do it again."- Mark Twain (shockingly this quote is about sailing across the Atlantic)

Schooner Seaward: