AMA with AMA: Answering YOUR questions!
A mysterious, long lost poet + travelling internationally.
Dear Kula Diaries,
Hello and welcome to yet another edition of ‘Ask Me Anything’ — the time every single week when I answer your random assortment of questions, just to see what happens. I had a lot of fun writing the answers to the questions this week, and I hope you enjoy reading them! If you’d like to submit a question for a future AMA, you can do that in the Kula Diaries Vault.
For the past few days, I’ve been ‘recovering’ from the excitement of last week’s Benaroya Hall concert. I’ve had a very sleepy weekend filled with making watches (more on that later), drinking tea, meditating and baking. It was really relaxing and I loved every second of it.
This week, I’m looking forward to leading DAY 1 of our May Dance Experiment and teaching about backcountry hygiene in a ‘Planning the Trip of your Dreams in Washington’s National Parks’ class. I also have a BIRD playlist planned for Friday of the May Dance experiment, and I’m pretty excited about my ridiculous line-up of bird songs that I’ve chosen (including one about seagulls). Tomorrow, I’m looking forward to eating my breakfast sandwich… and I’ve already meal-prepped all of my salads for the week… so, I’m just putting this out there — it’s going to be smooth sailing.
I hope your week is totally amazing too — if you feel like it, tell me something fun you are looking forward to in the comments, I’d love to hear about it!
Ok… before I end up writing for another decade… let’s get to the questions!
Dear AMA,
I’ve lost my copy of the Collected Works of Raymond Zerwick. Can you please transcribe the poem on page 37?
Ok, so this might need some context.
When I applied to be a Park Ranger, I had to pass a battery of ‘tests’ — both psychological and physical — in order to be eligible to interview for the position. As a Park Ranger in WA, I was required to carry a firearm — which meant that I had to go through standard law enforcement ‘screening’. For my job as a park ranger, I had to perform a variety of tests:
A physical agility test that included a 1.5 mile run, a 300m sprint, push-ups and sit-ups, a shuttle run and a bench press.
A 1200 question psychological test.
An interview with a psychologist, based on the results of my written psychological test.
An extensive personal history statement, where I ‘admitted’ to anything ‘bad’ or illegal that I had ever done in my entire life.
A comprehensive background check, that included my neighbors and former classmates and family members being contacted and interviewed.
A drug test and a physical strength test that included me sitting on some strange machine that tested the flexibility and muscle strength of my appendages.
A polygraph test.
A few weeks ago, in one of our morning dance experiment sessions, I was joking around about the term, ‘steepling’. If you’ve never experienced steepled fingers before, this is what it looks like:
During that session, I was joking that the only time I had ever been ‘steepled’ was when I was being interviewed by the psychologist during my law enforcement ranger interview. The 1200 question test seemed to be a variety of completely ridiculous questions… as well as very repetitive questions, asked over and over again, in various iterations. The psychologist steepled his fingers at me as he peered over his miniature spectacles, looking very concerned about my test results:
Psychologist: “It says here that you’ve thought about hurting people before. What did you mean by that?”
Me: “Well, when I was a kid, I thought about hurting my sisters when they annoyed me… so I’d be lying if I said I had never thought about hurting somebody else.”
Psychologist: <increasing the pitch of the steeple> “I see.”
As I was speaking about this testing experience, I recalled a few of the questions on the written exam that had always seemed… well… ridiculous. Just imagine that you are taking a 1200 question psychological test to become a park ranger, and now imagine that these are the questions you are answering:
Now, I can’t exactly recall what I answered for the first one… but I can only guess that I said ‘true’… considering that I had ridden a unicycle for a good portion of my childhood… and legitimately did want to join the circus:
My best guess on these ‘curveball’ questions is that they are a part of the test in order to establish a ‘baseline’ for candidates. By including questions that most people will answer ‘false’ to — it would allow the testing facilitators to have a foundational score that would make deviations from that ‘normal’ score more obvious. But, I’ve always wondered: Who is Raymond Zerwick? I have googled the name, but I’ve never been able to find a poet named Raymond Zerwick. I’m pretty sure that he is an imaginary poet… but I’ve always had this vivid fantastical reality in which there is one Park Ranger Candidate who flunked the psychological test… and can’t figure out why. Completely distraught, they return to their house after their psych testing… pour themselves a bourbon… and retreat to their expansive home library for solace — whereby they cozy up in an armchair, surrounded by The Collected Works of Raymond Zerwick.
For the record, I did pass all of my tests. I was nervous for the polygraph test, because everybody gets nervous. But, there was a pretty easy trick to passing it: I told the truth. I’ve done a lot of dumb things in my life — I drank underage in college and I smoked pot a few times (illegally) too. I stole a ream of paper from the print shop where I worked, and I took a pair of scrubs from the Trauma Unit so that I could hem them to fit me. I definitely was not ‘perfect’ — but I never did anything awful… maybe just some things that didn’t involve much thinking. But, I told the truth about them. And, guess what? That’s what they were looking for — not perfection… just honesty. Honesty is hard, especially when you feel shame about the things that you’ve done — but I’m glad that I’m not perfect, because that would probably be pretty boring.
For the record, if you are interested in pursuing a career as a park ranger — please let me know, I’d be happy to write about the entire process in a lot more detail.
So, without further adieu, I’m going to embody the energy, wisdom and creativity of Poet Raymond Zerwick … and transcribe the poem that appears on page 37 of their poetry book, which is entitled Poems to Remember Me By:
Dear AMA,
When is the last time you were in a different country?
I’ve been really fortunate to travel a lot in my life… but I haven’t been out of the country since 2017. At the end of 2017, after I left my job as a Railroad Police officer, Aaron and I travelled to Todos los Santos, Mexico to attend a life coaching training course with the amazing Anna Suil. The course was pretty intense — so we didn’t get to spend much time exploring the country, since we were in training for most of the day. That being said — we got to stay in a beautiful tent on the beach, and we did a sunrise hike almost every single morning to a small bluff that overlooked the ocean. One day, we saw some Humpback Whales breaching, and it was pretty spectacular!
Other than Mexico, I’ve had the opportunity to travel to many interesting places: Tahiti, Bhutan, Argentina, Belize, Guatemala, England, Scotland, Italy, Greece, the Cayman Islands, Canada (Nova Scotia) and Thailand. With the exception of one trip to Italy to perform with an orchestra and another trip to visit Greece for a summer study scholarship research project, all of these trips were for recreational purposes. I love travelling and seeing new places, but I also used to feel an extreme need to get away from where I was. In the past few years, however, I haven’t felt as much of a desire to travel long distances. I’m not sure why — maybe I’m just happy where I am?
When I was in Bhutan, we were hiking through villages that were 80 miles from anywhere. And when I say 80 miles from anywhere… I mean that there were no roads - just trails. So, if the people in the mountainous village wanted to go anywhere… they had to walk 80 miles to get to the nearest town. We actually encountered a woman who was travelling (by foot) with her two children that were strapped to the side of a pony in pouches:
I had the amazing opportunity to meet a lot of folks who lived in very remote villages in Bhutan, and do you know what? They were really happy. Keep in mind that this was back in 2011 — so a lot of my own self-awareness and understanding of others has changed drastically, but I distinctly remember wondering (at that time) how the people of Bhutan could be so happy without going on vacation all the time. Since I felt the need to constantly ‘get away’ from things — didn’t they? This was very much a thought that occurred from a place of having the ability to travel internationally for recreational purposes — which is indeed a privilege that most of the world does not have. In addition to the excessive financial expense and inaccessibility of intentionally leaving a country like Bhutan — the concept of ‘vacation’, just isn’t really in their vernacular like it is in ours. I asked our guide Ugyen (pronounced ‘Ooo-gen’) about this, and he was confused: “A vacation? Why?” It never occurred to me that they had nothing that they needed to escape from.
When I came home from Bhutan, I was absolutely miserable. I found out I was getting laid off from my job as a Park Ranger… and my relationship with my (now) ex was in shambles. The joy that I experienced on that trip was something unlike anything that I had ever felt in my life — and then ‘reality’ came crashing back into my life like a tidal wave, and I crumpled under its weight. It took me months to even find the desire to go for a hike again. It’s funny, because when I reflect on that Bhutan trip now — I don’t think that there was anything inherently wrong with trying to feel better, and I absolutely cherish the experience of that trip. I only wish that I had known how to cultivate that peace from within myself, once I returned home. I wish that I had been able to experience Bhutan — but also, simultaneously, love my life. I didn’t know that life was something that you could love all the time… not just when you were on vacation.
After we left Bhutan, we spent 2 days in Bangkok, before beginning the very long series of flights that would bring us back to Seattle. One of the most difficult parts of travelling to Bhutan was the incredibly strict weight requirement for the flight from Bangkok to Bhutan. No passenger was permitted to carry more than 66lbs of luggage (total). Now, if you aren’t trekking for 3 weeks… that might not be an issue, but in addition to my clothing, I also had to carry 3 weeks worth of hiking snacks, hiking gear, and my sleeping pad and sleeping bag. I ended up hauling two duffel bags that weighed in at right under 60lbs. Needless to say, I didn’t bring a lot of options for casual clothing to wear in the few days before and after the trek. So, when we flew to Thailand… I only had a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. We met up with a few of the other members of our trek in Thailand, and one of the women made reservations for us at, ‘a nice restaurant in Bangkok’. At that point in my life, ‘nice’ was something akin to The Olive Garden or Red Lobster. I did not have much experience with ‘nice’ restaurants, and so I showed up in the only clothes that I had with me: a pair of jeans with a small hole over my left butt cheek and a grey t-shirt that said, Hike Zion.
Unbeknownst to me, this woman had made reservations at a restaurant called Vertigo. On their website, they describe themselves like this:
And so, much to the chagrin of the entire waitstaff — and everybody else at the restaurant, who seemed to have gotten the memo about dressing in formal attire — I proceeded to tarnish the 360 degrees views of the ‘Ultimate Dining Experience in Bangkok’ with my butt-cheek-torn jeans and my disheveled appearance. I can still vividly remember the dinner at this restaurant — which was absolutely spectacular, by the way. When the meal was served, a literal team of servers appeared from seemingly nowhere and choregraphed a dramatic placement of our serving plates… followed by theatrically removing a ‘warming lid’ from the plates in perfect synchronization. The breeze on the top of the building was warm and pleasant, and the massive expanse of Bangkok stretched, unfathomably, in every single direction — it was the biggest, noisiest place that I had ever been in my life… and the stark contrast to the quiet nights of the Himalayas was overwhelming and loud. I stood at the edge of that rooftop restaurant that night… and in addition to contemplating the seemingly ‘relaxed’ building codes in Bangkok that would have permitted for a 3ft tall clear, glass ‘railing’ between all of us and the 61 floors down to the street…. I wondered if I’d ever be able to find that feeling of quiet again.
This morning on our ‘together walk’, I was telling Aaron about this question, and we were both reflecting on the way that our life ‘used to be’… we spent all year trying to straddle the spaces between our vacations. ‘Life’ was just a means to an end… the path that we had to take to get to a place where we could finally enjoy ourselves and relax a little bit. Except, that we rarely did — because once we were on vacation, we spent most of the time mourning the loss of the vacation, instead of actually being present. In the last two days before going back to ‘real life’, it felt like we had been flung off a building — desperately trying to grab onto the remaining shreds of the vacation and simultaneously dreading the return to normalcy. I experienced severe phone anxiety about turning on my cell phone and checking my e-mail — to the point where I was nearly sick. I lived in a constant state of needing to be somewhere other than where I was… so, very sadly, even the most amazing vacation could only temporarily fill that void of discontent… because the discontent was created by me, and by the lens that I was using to look at the world around me.
I would love to travel internationally again — but I’m also OK if I don’t. Next year will be my 10th wedding anniversary with Aaron, and we’ve talked about going back to Tahiti to celebrate (we were married in Tahiti, on the island of Moorea). There are a few islands in Tahiti that I’d love to explore — some of them are a bit more rugged… and one island called Rurutu is a place where you can snorkel and watch a migrating population of nursing humpback whales, which would be an incredible life experience. I’d love to go back to Europe someday, and take Aaron with me — and perhaps ride our motorcycles on some of the mountain roads. I’ve also been contemplating a motorcycle trip through the Himalayas, which would be pretty spectacular. I don’t feel any rush, though — I love where I am, and I’m just really happy to be included as a life participant on planet earth.
Friends — thank you so much for being here! And thank you so much for asking such fun questions every single week, I cannot begin to describe my glee as I answer them. They spark my creativity and enthusiasm for life in so many surprising ways, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to share and connect with all of you. So, I know I say it every single week… but thank you for reading, and thank you for being here, and thank you for being you.
I’m sending you all so much love this week, and all weeks!
Something fun I am looking forward to is reading your Sunday post!! I’m going to guess it’s about making watches? Also I am looking forward to hearing my podcast sound design come together in the next few weeks!
I loved your description of silence and noise… like a follow-up to what you’ve mentioned with The Musical Mountaineers!