Missy | July 30, 2008

Hiking the Death Canyon trail, Teton Range

The thing about trying to capture the scale and beauty of the mountains and valleys of Northwest Wyoming in a photograph is that darn sense of scale. Sometimes this can be accomplished by putting people in the shot (as I did above). However, I tend to keep people out of my photos. Of all my digital photographs from the trip (there were about 100), I found only a handful worth posting because most fail to convey the breathless, mouth-open, unbe-f***ing-lievable-ness of the scenery I hiked my way into. Very disappointing. My film is currently being processed and I have only slightly more hope for it, if only because I vastly prefer color slide film to digital. (Also, I bought a polarizing filter the day before my travels, but that doesn’t mean I used it correctly.)

Meanwhile, Tendonitis-in-the-Knee Watch 2008: still hurting! Why? I don’t know. I do know that I might see marginal improvement were I able to take anti-inflammatories; I’m scheduled to have a mole cut out and stitched up this week and I can’t risk NSAID-induced bleeding all over the place. So, I’m RICE-ing my way through it, to little effect. Also: a running-one’s-body-into-the-ground/post-vacation sickness (bronchitis! yay!) has kicked in. I will attribute blame to my lungs freaking out when smacked with thick, sludgy New York air after a week of wonderful lungfuls of thin, piney mountain air. With the exception of going out to dinner on Saturday (at Patois, where I happened to bump into blogger/colleague/friend/fellow Cobble Hillian Raquel and her husband), I’ve gone to bed around 9 pm for…about 10 days now. It’s true.

Wait a second, nobody likes a complainer!

Let’s talk about my trip. It was dominated by hiking, but not camping (I stayed in the national park lodges, which were pleasant enough. I kind of wish I had thought to work in a national park during my summers off when I was younger.) Having never really been into camping, part of me nevertheless really wanted to camp in the backcountry despite temperatures that drop into the 30’s overnight. That’s for another day, I guess. Also for another day: a biking tour. The tour outfit I went with leads hiking and biking tours all over this continent, including the Canadian Rockies, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, etc. (If you would like more details about this company along with my full testimonial, email me.)

Given that this trip required 40-50 miles of hiking with elevation changes of 2000+ feet, the only training I felt was necessary was my regular exercise routine. Specifically, I commuted to & from work by bike (about 20-25 minutes one way) as often as possible and went to my gym when I got here in the morning to walk for 30 minutes on a treadmill at a 15 degree incline and a sturdy pace in my hiking shoes. What I didn’t train for–and what really nailed me on the hikes–was the downhill part. I thought I was too young and too cool for trekking poles. Cardiovascularly, I was fine; my knees, however, were not. This is what I have lived and learned: people ~20 years my senior were using poles and painlessly covering the same mileage as me. Other pole-less people were either younger or had a better build-up of true hiking mileage before the trip.

If I did ever want to pursue the biking adventures, I’d really have to dedicate my weekends and free time to training. It’s not enough to commute to work by bike and ride over to Prospect Park for a few laps on weekends. I’m talking about training rides up to Washington Heights and back and then down to Coney Island and back. In one day. On Saturday and Sunday. For several weekends. Training aside, because that makes me want to faint just to think about it, I prefer hiking because bikes don’t allow you to truly experience the backcountry that is accessible only on foot.

Any altitude sickness I had was mild and passed within 24 hours; my nosebleeds ended after Day 3. I lunched on peanut butter & jelly sandwiches everyday (they are tasty and keep well in your pack and provide energy!) and almost always had four bottles of water with me. Plus two SLR cameras. No wonder I was so top heavy and unbalanced. The only bit of mild vertigo I experienced was coming back down from Lake Solitude, at around mile 14, when the beautiful, quiet Jenny Lake overlook I had first seen at around 7:30 in the morning had now been transformed into Disneyland: a cacophony of parents and kids everwhere in flip-flops. The trail at that point is at times steep, rocky, and narrow with a significant drop off of the side. My legs were stiff and tired, the sun was hot, and I found myself gripping the rocks to steady myself. I must have looked like a big mess.

That hike was my favorite, though. It was later in the week when I’m sure the group grew sick of each other–or maybe that was just me. In any case, we thinned out on the trail; I hiked the nearly 15 miles largely by myself to the cadence of my own footsteps and breaths. It was during this hike that I got why people (not me) enjoy running long distances by themselves. It’s meditative. I didn’t even try to hold on to any one thought, outside of maybe, “I’m hungry” or “Am I lost” or “I have to pee”. Because of the 600 inches of snow that fell in the area this winter (a typical year is 200 inches), the rapids and waterfalls were everywhere and strong, and Lake Solitude was still mostly frozen over.

Earlier in the week, in Yellowstone, we hiked up to the top of Mount Washburn, which features a large array of wildflowers and views of the region. Stunning. At the top, in a tiny apartment in a fire lookout, lives a ranger for several months out of the year. I keep thinking of that episode of Northern Exposure where the lonely lookout ranger is fired (pun intended) and distressed and then comes down from the mountain to bore the townsfolk with his endless talking. The Mount Washburn ranger has any number of visitors during the season, but I can only assume that he has the same conversations all day every day.

UPDATE: The slide film looks promising, if a little under-exposed. It’ll take forever to scan, so expect Flickr updates in the next couple of days rather than tonight. Meanwhile: 12 stitches, laryngitis + chest cold, and a painful knee that flares up any time I have to descend stairs–hi there New York City subway system!–and I am one big sad sack of ailments. But I am, surprisingly, in good spirits. You can’t knock me down.

Category: vacation | 7 Comments »
Tags: hiking, Tetons, vacation, wyoming

Missy | July 26, 2008

A bison, also known as the American buffalo. Steaming land in view, on the grounds of Yellowstone National Park. Yes, I saw Old Faithful.

I covered over 40 miles on foot up to elevations beyond 9,000 feet this week. I saw some of the most spectacular things I think I have ever and could ever see in my life, while re-aggravating tendonitis in my knee, developing some sort of sun rash (among other rashes), and experiencing a brief moment of panic in the Tetons when I found myself 7 miles in and 2K feet up from my starting point, alone, surrounded by a thick trail-covering layer of snow. Seriously: panic. Of course, I made sure to take pictures to illustrate the story The Time I Got Lost in the Middle of a Mountain Range.

It was, really, the best week ever.

More to come over on Flickr as I get film developed. (I shot some digital, seen here. One thing I discovered about myself along the way is that I am not Ansel Adams. Capturing landscape of this nature is difficult!) Right now, the only thing I can think about is how badly I want some New York pizza.

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Tags: bison, wyoming

Missy | July 13, 2008

Gowanus Canal, with the Williamsburg Savings Bank building (in Fort Greene, not Williamsburg) in view, Brooklyn

Whenever I ride over the Gowanus Canal, which is a couple of times a week, I sing a little song in my head that goes, “Oh Gowanus, My Gowanus”, which is not to be confused with Walt Whitman or My Antonia. It comes from a song about the Washington, DC neighborhood Mount Pleasant by the super-fun, 90’s DC band Tuscadero, who I saw a number of times in the early days of my living in DC. The song goes, as you might’ve guessed, “Oh Mount Pleasant, my Mount Pleasant”, with verses that speak to, if I’m remembering the song correctly, broken glass and odor. The day I took this photo, I went to a birthday party where one of the guests was a former member of Tuscadero. How’s that for coincidence?

And now for something a little different. I’m experimenting with video blogging. It cuts off at the end for reasons I don’t know–maybe a time limit? No matter; the only thing you miss is me frantically searching for the stop button while I yell, “Stop! Stop!” Also: the fidgeting? While am a gestural person by inclination, it was actually very windy today and I was also trying to sit forward in an already uncomfortable little beach chair.

Video Blog 7/13/08 from Listen Missy on Vimeo.

The blogs I mention can be found here and here. One link I neglected to mention (and would’ve apparently run out of time doing so) is this new Swoon piece underground at Honeyspace in Chelsea.

UPDATE 7/14/08: Looks like comments are back online. If you sent me an email in the last 24 hours, you will probably want to resend it. There’s still lots of slowness. Please be patient and try again later. Everything looks to be back to normal. Just a quick note that I’ll be on vacation and internetless until the 26th, so if you get no response from me, that’s why.

In the meantime, I’m sure all of those lost emails contain a variation on the following: “But Missy, how does the ballet end? That part is cut off!!!” I’ll tell you: Giselle saves Albrecht from death not just because she loves him, but because she forgives him.

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Missy | July 5, 2008

Today marks my triumphant return to the internet–due to a bad modem that I diagnosed as a bad modem but which the cable company said was not the case and when would it be convenient to schedule a technician visit? Eights days later, I could have put this whole mess to rest if I’d just followed my instinct and gone to one of the offices, waited in line for an hour and exchanged the dang thing.

Not that I minded being internetless; my attention span quickly reverted back to its mid-90’s self and I think I read something like three books this week. I watched the Mets spank the Yankees in their home stadium only to have their asses handed right back to them in three subsequent subway series games. I went to see Sam Shepard’s new play and Sam Shepard was there, sending me into a tizzy of a reinvigorated and, admittedly, bizarre crush. I saw the waterfalls at night. I finished the months-long project of watching all of the Northern Exposure seasons and cried when it was done. I finally upgraded my laptop. I went out to dinner.

Nevertheless, I was seriously sweating it out because–and I cannot believe I am saying this, as my personal time is extremely valuable to me–I desperately needed to get work done on the off-hours. I refused, however, to go into the office on a Sunday. Sorry co-workers, if I snapped at you this week.

When I did have available moments online, I simply sighed at the pile-up of posts in my Google Reader and generally found myself clicking “Mark All As Read”. I was feeling kind of done. Still, I DID just renew this domain name for NINE more years. You’re stuck with me. And I’ve got a ton of iPhone photos that want to be shared. Let’s press on together.

Olafur Eliasson at P.S. 1. Photos were not allowed, people were stopped, but somehow I got away scott free with both a film camera and a camera phone. I also appear to be wearing some sort of codpiece.

Olafur Eliasson at the MoMA. I didn’t see a single person stopping to look around in this room. It was packed throughout the exhibit and everyone–EVERYONE–was snapping photos. Clearly, I’m guilty of this crime against couth as well.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone carrying that many balloons, much less on a residential street by someone not in a clown costume. Then again, I’m not sure why anything surprises me anymore. I really, really wanted to ask her if she felt lighter.

The infamous NYC condoms, freely distributed throughout the city. I was out one night with my friend Michele and we each took two from the bar–one to use and one to keep as a souvenir. I’ll be honest, I have no idea where they are right now.

This is what’s known as a panda shot–a selfie taken while riding a bicycle. There’s a Flickr group dedicated to the panda. I’m just coming off of the Union Street bridge over the Gowanus Canal. Good thing I took the photo then because on the way back home, over 3rd Street, I saw a dead raccoon on my side of the bridge. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if I’d caught it in the photo or, more likely, inadvertently rode over it? I’d have nightmares for the rest of my life.

My friend Josh and I went to see the band X. One of my favorite things about the whole show was that Exene was dressed in a very mom-like navy pantsuit.

Rehearsals for new you. Lindsay, who I already knew from the Cunningham studios, and Johannes Weiland standing in the distance during one of his rehearsals at City Center. The second photo is tech rehearsal at the Ailey facility. This is the scene where “It’s my birthday and it lasts ALL DAY” is repeated over & over & over.

My favorite self-portrait series ever. I was on the bus, late at night, coming home from Southpaw and messing around with the phone’s camera. I completely missed my stop.

This is Emory, the littlest Republican. (He’s got elephants on his shirt.) At Enid’s in Greenpoint.

A sign in Greenpoint, which is a Polish neighborhood. I laugh whenever I see these signs because of the preponderance of j’s and z’s and k’s and very few vowels. I can’t even begin to figure out the pronunciation. Recently, my co-worker George and I started playing tennis at McCarren park, which sits between Williamsburg & Greenpoint. I suggested those courts as a replacement for the Essex Street courts in Chinatown (that feature chain-link fences for nets), my logic being, hipsters don’t play tennis. Right? You’d no doubt agree. What I didn’t account for, however, was the Polish tennis mafia. There is no attendant on duty at McCarren to monitor permits (NYC charges $7 per permit which allows you a single hour of tennis on any city court) and the one-hour limit therefore becomes an honor-system rule. Try telling that to the set of old, rotund guys who keep switching partners in & out of singles & doubles games across 3-4 of the courts for hours on end. The clock does not start over when you change partners, guys! When you try to reason with them by, you know, telling them what dicks they’re being while 8 people are waiting to play, they pretend to not understand any English. I guess this means I have to start relying on 311. Or learn Polish. Is the Polish word for ‘jerk’, ‘jzrkzejk’?

I recently discovered the awesomeness of the Garment District and two of its fabric stores, Mood and B&J. Both permit swatches but I decided not to bother and instead photographed any fabric that caught my fancy. I had, like, 30 fabric photos. That gold fabric is now hanging in Josh’s kitchen.

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