Chicken Time

I babysat 7 chickens last week. This fact may surprise those of you who know how I feel about animals, but I found the chickens relatively amusing, and I thoroughly enjoyed the role of urban farmer.

The chickens belong to one of my girlfriends from book club who, in addition to 7 chickens, has a husband and three children in West Seattle. They went on vacation for a week and asked me to house sit.

I lived most of the week with a heightened sense of anxiety: I was certain that I would unintentionally kill one of the chickens or that a raccoon would eat them all up before I could get home and lock up the coop.

Dead chickens filled my dreams at night.

My daily chores consisted of giving them food and water in the morning, and collecting their eggs and locking their coop at night. I also tried to talk to them as much as possible in case they were bored or lonely.

One interesting chicken fact I learned is that, unlike human women, their eggs and their poo come out of the same hole. I gave those eggs an intense scrub with lots of hot water before putting them in the cartons.

I love the urban farming ideals of sustainability and self-reliance and of being more connected to our food production. But I don't know if I am ready for my own flock of birds quite yet; I think I'll start with some vegetable plants.

Hey lady! Sorry to interrupt your hard work.

The spoon is for fetching eggs laid at the back of the coop.

The coop where they roost on their own at dusk.

 Chicken play pen. 

They are occasionally invited out into the grassy yard as well.

We're Coming For You, Mt. Rainier!

I am training to hike Mt. Rainier with a hiking drill sergeant. His name is Michael. He is a fifty-something Catholic bachelor pharmacist, and he has ascended Rainier 8 times. 

I met Michael through Melissa, his co-worker and my friend, who is a 35-year-old married Mormon woman who works as a dietician at Children's Hospital.

They are both intense.

When Michael did STP (the Seattle to Portland bike ride), he rode all the way back to Seattle the next day.

Melissa has completed two Iron Mans and hiked the Appalachian Trail.

The first time I hiked with them, I stopped halfway up the trail and pulled out of my Nalgene. Michael said, "Oh, we don't do that."

I asked: "You mean you don't drink or you don't take breaks?"
"Neither," he replied.

One of his mantras is: "If you're having fun, you're not working hard enough."

We have been doing about one training hike a week since November. After work. And until recently, completely in the dark. With headlamps. Needless to say, daylight savings time and the advent of spring have greatly increased the pleasure of our training hikes.

On Saturdays, we do longer harder hikes, like the one in the pictures above. On that hike, up to a peak called Mailbox, the last 500 feet of the 4,000-foot ascent were completely exposed.

Horizontal snow and ice numbed my face and pelted my eyeballs.
I slipped on the icy rocks a few times and face-planted once.
My CamelBack nozzle froze to the magnet, so I couldn't get any water. 
The snot on my face blew up into my eyes, blindly me temporarily.

I don't know why I'm smiling in that picture.

Whenever we passed someone on our way down, I would think, "Who are these people and why are they doing this?!"

I guess I'm one of them now.

Projected Rainier ascent: June 23-26. Stay tuned.

Adrienne Rich, 1929-2012

In honor of the passing of the great American feminist poet, Adrienne Rich, whose stated mission was to "create a society without domination," the director of my agency shared with us this poem yesterday at staff meeting.


My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed

I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,

with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.