Tundra Glamour Shots by Lou

***Originally posted on Facebook July 7th, 2007

I'm pretty sure that i'm the only person I know of who has worn longjohns both 3 out of the last 6 and 7 out of the last 9 days. Here is a ackwardly incomplete list of nouns and ideas that describe my current mental, spiritual, physical and stylistic coordinates (UTM NAD 83). 

Canvas tents, lakes that crackle, red longjohns, grey lonjohns, sentient diesel stoves with a devilish nature, wool socks with a red stripe and a black stripe that smell like lysol and swamp, fluorescent hats whose fluorescense is challenged by dirt and sweat, the feeling that saturates your whole being for a few days after experiencing perfection in your dream, 7976648N 559933E Zone 11W, gigantic trees, frozen waterfalls, cargo pockets on any kind of pants, babes who are completely vulnerable but still ferocious, being attached to an artic char by a thin buoyant string, million hectare sandboxes, gigantic fields of gabbro boulders whose shadows circle them endlessly (for a couple months anyways), multiple layers of clouds moving in different directions because of complicated winds, natural acid mine drainage, the urgency of a minor ninth chord, the pioneering spirit of our grandparents that we will never be able to equal, fifty pounds of tundra muck in large white rice bags identified by a bold number and a blue security tag that will be airlifted to south africa, sieved, and examined by someone with a magnifying glass, a lot of patience and an eye for kimberlite indicator minerals.

"I can never understand someone by their strengths. Nothing is revealed there. I can only understand someone by their weaknesses"
-Anil (from Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje)

"i know i can't be free"
-Johnny Cash

"red rose growin' on another man's vine"
-Tom Waits

"A sense of urgency had crept into her style. Whereas in the past Sissy had kept up her astonishing pace out of sheer exhileration at being unique and being free, she now kept going because she was afraid to stop"
-Tom Robbins

"a cotton dress snagged in a willow tree"
-undertakin' daddies

"Someone saves your life, and they'll love you forever. You might be the one good deed, the deathbed memory that justifies their whole existence"
-Chuck Palahniuk