Podcasts about white pine

Cabin Cousins: Part 5 The Gales of November. Based on a post by NewMountain80, in 6 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Connections. "Hmm" Melissa said, her face still buried in the pillow. She shifted and turned her head, and I moved to her side with one arm and a leg still draped over so we could look into each other's eyes. "Wow. That was..." She sighed. "...Wonderful." I smiled and kissed her cheek. "I'm glad you enjoyed it as much as I did." She squinted at me. "Are you sure I'm not dreaming, and you're just a figment of my imagination?" She said playfully, though I could tell there was something serious behind the question. "I'm real, and I'm right here, in your bed, and I love you." She searched my eyes for a moment, rolled onto her side, and pulled me in close, kissing me deeply. When we stopped kissing to catch our breath, she whispered. "It's our bed, and I love you too." We held each other in silence for a long while. I knew that she had something else to say, but I didn't push her. Eventually, she broke the silence. "Do you want pancakes? I want pancakes." Not exactly the soul-baring statement I was expecting, but now that she had said it, by damn I wanted pancakes. "I'll help." I had made pancakes exactly once before, and it wasn't a complete disaster, so I felt that my inclusion in the process wouldn't be too much of a hindrance. She got a distant look in her eye, then rolled onto her back, and covered her face with her hands with a groan. "I don't have any pancake mix." She peeked at me through her fingers and we both started laughing. I'm not sure why but we both found it hilarious but we roared with laughter. I playfully pushed her towards the side of the bed. "Well, get dressed. I'll take you out for breakfast." Still laughing, she got up and opened a dresser drawer. Stepping into a pair of light blue panties, she asked. "Are you getting dressed too, or are you going to go like that?" "I'm thinking about it." I quipped, eyes following her every movement. I loved watching her move. She had a litheness and grace to her. Cat-like? No, that's not quite right. Amazonian? Maybe, but that implies a stature and bulk that Melissa didn't have. She was fit, not body builder muscular, and she wasn't particularly tall, just shy of my own five foot ten. She was perfect, and my eyes couldn't get enough of her. Let's leave it at that. "You'll give the old ladies at Perkins quite a shock." She shot back, still laughing. With an exaggerated sigh, I rolled off the bed. "For the sake of the old ladies, fine, I'll get dressed." Chapter Sixteen. The plate clinked as Melissa set down her fork. "Ugh. I ate too much, but that really hit the spot." She had attacked her "tremendous twelve" meal with murderous intent. All that remained was a scrap of crust from a piece of toast, and some maple syrup residue on an otherwise clean plate. She had even swiped a strip of bacon off of my plate, an act that left fork marks on my brother's hands on several occasions. I looked at my plate, with its pile of hash browns and a third of a stack of pancakes remaining, and set down my fork. "I guess I didn't work up as much of an appetite as you, cause I'm stuffed too." Melissa looked at me with her special smile and mischievous eyes. "Well, you'll have to try harder next time." "I need to work out more." "I can help with that." She replied, and we both giggled, knowing the truth of it. "Let's start with a walk." We left the Perkins restaurant, and with Melissa navigating, we drove north out of Duluth on Hwy 61. We pulled off and parked where a little river crossed under the road and spilled through a steep set of rocky rapids to Lake Superior below. We hiked down a little trail, and she led me out onto one of the big rocks. The scenery was spectacular, and the water rushing past the rocks had a hypnotic quality. It hadn't snowed last night, but the wind was blowing hard off the lake, and the constant mist from the rapids gave the crisp early November air some real bite. We sat for a while without speaking. Just two people holding hands, taking in the scenery and the roar of the water. There was a Gordon Lightfoot song that had something about the gales of November, how did it go? "When I left home," Melissa began, just loud enough to hear. I turned and watched her, careful to hear what she was saying over the noise of the rapids. I had been hoping for, and dreading this moment, when she decided to get the details of her past out in the open. I resolved to not interrupt and to let her tell it at her own pace. "This was the first place I went." She continued. "I didn't know where to go. I didn't have anywhere to go." She sniffed. We were alone but had someone been watching, her running nose and the tears on her cheek might have been assumed to have been caused by the cold, but I knew differently. I could see the deep down hurt that was welling up, and my heart ached. I squeezed her hand, and let her talk. "Every night for two weeks, I'd leave school, then go up the hill to the mall and sit in the food court to do my homework. When the mall closed, I came here, and parked for the night right over there." She pointed up to the little parking lot where my truck was. "I'd wake up, scrape the snow and frost off the windows, and go to school. I didn't tell anyone because then I'd have to explain why I was sleeping in a car in February. I had friends, but not close friends, you know? Like, not the kind of friends that I could talk to about..." She trailed off and wiped her nose on her jacket sleeve. "I had been lucky, it hadn't been as cold as it should have been, but then one night it got very cold. When I left the mall, I knew if I spent the night here again, I could be in serious danger. So I went to the laundromat. There was never anyone in there in the middle of the night, so I sat at one of the tables and fell asleep. The owner woke me up a couple of hours later, yelling at me that I couldn't sleep there, so I got in my car and came back here." She had been looking at the water as she spoke, but now turned and looked at me. I saw the fear and shame these memories invoked. I wanted to say something, anything to comfort her, but I knew that I should let her say what she needed to say, so I let her continue. "When I went to sleep on the back seat, I didn't think I was going to ever wake up, and I was okay with that. I didn't care that I was going to die. Nobody cared, nobody would miss me. The world would be better off without one more stupid girl. Why bother going on?" She looked away from me, east towards the vast lake, and her face twisted up in anger. "You know, the worst thing, the worst part of all of it, is they made me feel like it was all my fault. They had me so twisted up, that I believed that I was the cause of everything that happened." She turned back to me, the anger fading, leaving just a profound sadness. I wiped the tears from her cheek, and she leaned her shoulder against me. "Did your parents tell you what happened?" My throat was dry, and I swallowed hard before replying. "They were vague." She gave a little smile that was like a sunbeam on a stormy day. "I asked your mom and dad not to tell anyone. You're so lucky to have them." She looked back to the lake and spoke quietly enough that if her face had not been right next to mine, I wouldn't have been able to hear her. "When I was fifteen, when I started looking more like a woman, and less like a little girl, my dad started abusing me. Mom, she was drunk more than she was sober. She knew, she had to know, and she didn't do anything." As the River roared in its ceaseless path to Lake Superior, and the cold wind whistled and rattled through the leafless trees, Melissa spoke of abuse and divorce, lost jobs and social status, the failing of the system to help a girl who was too scared to ask for help and the blame that was assigned for all of it. "So that night, I remember when the state trooper knocked on my window." She gave a brief mirthless huff. "I thought he was an angel, with the way his flashlight lit up the frost on the inside of the window. I thought I was dead, that it was all over. I felt relieved." She shook her head. "The next thing I remember was being in a hospital bed, wrapped in electric blankets, and seeing the sunrise through the window. That trooper was there. He had stayed with me, way past the end of his shift, just to make sure I was alright. Turns out, when they went to my parent's house to see what was going on, my dad was out of town, and my mom ended up getting arrested for assaulting an officer and having a bunch of heroin. That's why she went back to him. Not for me, but for the money to buy her drugs. The trooper persuaded me to reach out to my friends. He said that people can be capable of unexpected acts of kindness, and I decided to believe him. So I called Ashley. We had always gotten along pretty well, and her parents were always super nice to me. They let me stay with them, which was really awkward at first. I just couldn't believe that a family could be so, so perfect. It was like stepping into an old sitcom. Maybe there was a little trouble now and then, but everyone loved each other, and it all worked out in the end. It was surreal, but eventually, I started believing that it was how families should be. That it was right and good, and normal." She looked me in the eyes then, and I saw her love burning through the hurt. "I didn't think that I would ever have that. I thought that there was no way I could ever open up and let someone love me, to be me, to be normal. Who could want me? Then your parents invited me back to the cabin, and I grasped onto a foolish hope that maybe you could. Ever since it's just been, It just doesn't seem real. Charles, I know you love me, but I'm still so afraid." I silenced her with a quick kiss on the lips. I held her cold, rosy cheeks in my hands and looked her in the eyes. "None of what happened was your fault. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be loved. I love you, I will always love you. Nothing in the past, present, or future will stop me from loving you until the end of time, and when we're both gone from this world, I'll find you in the next and keep loving you!" Fresh tears streamed down her face, not tears of remembered pain, but tears of joyful love. She threw her arms around me and we held each other tight. Overhead, a hawk called, adding its little part to the scene of wind, water, and young lovers. Chapter Seventeen. Getting in my truck and leaving Duluth that evening was the hardest thing I had ever done. The only thing that gave me the strength to leave was the knowledge that it was only temporary. Soon, very soon, I would never have to leave her again. When I got home, Mom was at the kitchen table reading a newspaper. She greeted me with a smile. I had to be very careful with how I was going to handle this conversation. I didn't want to lie to my mom, but I also didn't want to tell her the whole truth. "How was your weekend? I didn't get a call from the cops, so it couldn't have been too exciting." "I was the cop! We went to a Halloween party dressed as the Village People." "Fun!" Mom exclaimed, giving me a beaming smile. "Yeah, and something else happened. Do you know how I can get my employee discount at any store? Well, we stopped at one of the stores in Duluth, and I ended up talking with the yard manager. They've been having trouble finding someone competent to drive a forklift, and if I transferred up there, they'd give me a raise and make me an assistant manager. He said I could start working up there in two weeks." All of these individual facts were technically true, but it still felt like lying. "Good for you! It's great to have in-demand skills. That's a long way to drive though." "Yeah, it would be like, five hours of driving every day." "Did you look into getting an apartment up there?" Mom folded up the newspaper and gave me her undivided attention. "After the school year starts, there's literally nothing cheap available." "Where would you stay then?" She asked, looking concerned. "Well, on the way home, I was thinking about who I know that lives up there. Rob lives in a dorm, so I couldn't get away with staying there long-term. But then I remembered that Melissa lives in Duluth, I could maybe call her and see if she wants a roommate." Okay, this last bit was a lie. I didn't feel good about it, but it had to be done. "Our Melissa? Have you called her yet?" "Not yet. I'm pretty sure I have her number in my phone." "You should figure this out sooner rather than later." She looked at the clock. "It's not too late, give her a call now." I made a show of finding Melissa's number as if I hadn't memorized it weeks ago. Melissa and I had rehearsed this moment. I had the volume on my phone turned way up, so my mom was sure to hear Melissa's side of the conversation too. "Hello?" Melissa's angelic voice asked after three rings. "Hi Melissa, it's Charles." "Charles! It's good to hear from you! What's up?" "Well, I'm going to be transferring up there for work, and I was wondering if you would mind having me as a roommate until I found a place of my own." Another necessary lie. "Yeah, I guess that would be okay. You're not going to find anywhere else to stay until the end of the school year. Even then, I was lucky to get this place, this spring." "So, you're okay with me staying with you?" "Yeah, it'll be fun. Like staying at the cabin, but I don't think my landlord would approve of campfires." "I'll pay half the rent, and utilities, and everything." "Naturally," Melissa said. "I was going to ask one of my friends if they wanted to move in. Only paying half the rent will make saving for school a lot easier." "Cool. So, I guess I'll give you a call tomorrow, and we can figure out the details?" "Yeah, okay." "I'm talking with my mom right now, so I should probably let you go." "Hi Mom!" Melissa yelled. "Hi, Melissa," Mom replied, loud enough to be sure that the phone picked it up. "Talk to you tomorrow, bye!" Melissa said, much quieter this time. "Bye." I had to be very careful not to reflexively say I love you. I put my phone away and noticed that my mom was studying me with a funny little smile on her face. Then in the most casual tone, she asked. "So, does she love you as much as you love her?" My heart nearly stopped. I couldn't respond. "That was a lovely charade. Unnecessary, but lovely." I couldn't speak. My brain frantically searched for words but found only shocked silence. "Oh, honey." She began, in a soothing motherly voice. "You're my baby. Did you think I wouldn't know? It was plain to see at the cabin that you two are in love. You spent the weekend with her?" I forced myself to reply. "Yes," I said, fearing that it was all over. I felt like crying. "Good," Mom said simply. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Mom knew about me and Melissa, and she was... Happy for me? "So, you're not mad about us?" "Oh, Charles. Love is so precious. It doesn't matter where you find it, but when you do, you hold on with both hands and never let go." My tears came then, flowing hard as I released all my pent-up fears and anxiety. Mom held me as I cried on her shoulder. She gently rubbed my back like she used to do when I was a kid. When my crying subsided, she held my shoulders at arm's length. "Now, tell me about her." I did. In the conversation that followed, I was more honest and open about my feelings than I could remember being to anyone other than Melissa. I explained how we knew what each other was thinking or feeling, just by looking into each other's eyes. I told her how I wanted to improve myself, to be a better person for Melissa. And, looking back on it with a touch of horror, I did my best to explain the connection I felt with Melissa when we made love. Throughout it all, my mother was nothing but caring and understanding. After all the fear of this moment, it was surreal. It felt so good, so liberating to tell her how I felt about Melissa. When I was done, I asked Mom. "Does Dad know?" "Oh, I doubt he picked up on it." "Are you going to tell him?" Of all the people in the family, I was sure that Dad would be the least likely to accept. He had always been very traditional. Kind and gentle, but with a very strict moral compass. "Of course. He's my husband. The way you feel about Melissa, I feel about him." She hugged me again. "Don't be ashamed. Love her with all your heart, and everything else will work itself out." She kissed me on the cheek and told me that she loved me. I told her that I loved her too, and said goodnight. I went to my bedroom, shut the door, and called Melissa. "What's up?" She answered. "I didn't think I'd hear from you until tomorrow." Deciding to just be direct about it, I said. "My mother has officially given us her blessing." The line was silent as Melissa processed this. When she spoke, I could tell that she was crying. "How did she find out?" She asked. I recounted the whole conversation. "See? I told you your mom was the best." "She really is." "So, what now?" She asked, with a bit of anxiety. "She said that she had to tell everyone because it's better to have it out in the open than have to keep lying to the family. I agreed." After a short pause, Melissa said. "Me too." As it turns out, my family's reaction was both better than I had feared and worse than I had hoped. My parents had called a family meeting and all of my immediate family, and their spouses, showed up. There were those like my mom, and my brother Mark, who were supportive and genuinely happy for me. On the other end of things, there were people like my second older brother, Stephen, and his wife, who were disgusted and called me a pervert. Most were somewhere in the middle, either not understanding and being polite about it, or just ambivalent to the whole issue. Then there was my dad. He just sat there the whole time, with a frown on his face, and never spoke a word. I couldn't tell if he was ashamed, or angry, or what, and it tore me up inside. He had never in his life been shy about voicing his opinion. After my mom, he was who I needed acceptance from the most. I desperately wanted him to say something, anything, but he never did. His silence cut deeper than any insult or accusation ever could. At the beginning, and with prompting from my mom, I had stood before everyone, confessing Melissa's and my love for each other, and that I was moving out to live with her in Duluth. After the initial shock and spectrum of reactions, I sat down and answered questions. Now, not being able to bear my father's silence any longer, I stood again, interrupting several side conversations. I addressed the whole group, but my words were meant for my father more than anyone. "Melissa and I truly love each other. Nothing you do or say can change it. Accept it, accept us, or don't. I don't care." Dad didn't react, didn't even look me in the eyes. I rushed to my room and locked the door. I curled up on my bed and cried, harder than I could remember ever crying before. The stress of the family meeting and my dad's non-reaction had utterly destroyed me. I held a pillow over my head to muffle the sounds of my uncontrollable sobs, and to hide my face from the world. "What if they're right about you?" A part of my mind asked. "What if you're just a sicko. That's what they all think." "No! I really do love her!" Another part of my mind answered. "What kind of weirdo falls in love with his cousin? What kind of deviant fucks someone in his own family?" "No! Our love is pure and perfect!" "Yeah, perfect. The perfect fantasy of a clinically twisted pervert! You're just taking advantage of a poor broken girl." "No..." I moaned aloud, holding my head in my hands. Sometime after, someone knocked lightly on my bedroom door. I ignored it, lost as I was in terrible contradictory thoughts. The knock came again, and I heard my mom's voice. "Charles, honey. Can I come in?" I didn't respond, knowing that right then I couldn't bear to face anyone, even my mother. "Oh, my baby." She said through the door. "All I want is for you to be happy. Follow your heart, everything will work out. I love you." Her words quieted the thoughts whirling through my mind, and though my sobs faded, the tears continued to flow. I was exhausted, physically and emotionally. I closed my eyes and imagined Melissa lying next to me. I thought about how if she were here, she would comfort me, and wipe the tears from my face. I could see her so clearly in my mind, see how her icy blue eyes would pour her inexhaustible love into me. Soon, my tears stopped flowing, and I regained a sense of peace. I felt awful for doubting myself, for doubting Melissa, if even for a moment. Our love is right. It is pure and perfect. She made me complete, as I made her complete. I drifted off to sleep, with a smile on my face, thinking about Melissa, and dreaming about the future. Chapter Eighteen. Charles copes with changes, but the biggest is yet to happen. The armrests of the padded chair where I was seated were a little too high to be comfortable, so I kept my hands folded in my lap. I gazed at the paintings of calm rural scenes hung on the walls of the spacious office. I wondered absently if they were real places or just the artist's impression of idyllic country life. I glanced at the woman in the matching chair positioned across from me. She was patiently waiting for me to continue my story, with an encouraging expression on her face. "I moved my things into Melissa's apartment a few days later and spent the night with her a couple of times when I had the day off. After the two weeks were up, I started work at the Duluth store and lived with her from then on. I think the only word to describe the years that followed is heavenly. I wouldn't have changed a single thing." "Tell me more about how your family reacted," said the woman, Dr. Clarke. "Did your father and brother ever come around?" "Dad? Yeah, he just needed a little time to process it. After that, he was as good with it as Mom was. The thing with him was, years before, before anyone knew what had been going on with Melissa's dad, he'd known that something was wrong. I'm not sure how, but he knew. After Melissa left home, he would call and check in on her. He paid to have her car fixed and even paid the deposit on her apartment. He always went out of his way to make her feel like she had people that cared. I think he loved her as if she were his own daughter, so the whole thing with the two of us was kind of a shock. When Melissa and I went to my parent's place for Thanksgiving, later that month; and he saw firsthand how happy she was, it wasn't an issue." "And your brother, Stephen?" Dr. Clarke prompted. "That same Thanksgiving, I ended up knocking him down with a punch to the face. He said that Melissa's family were all degenerates and that Melissa was just bringing that degeneracy to our family now. That was the last time I ever saw him." I forced my clenched fists to relax and laid my palms flat on my thighs. "Have you ever thought about reaching out to him? People can change a lot in twenty-four years." "No," I said firmly. "It was his choice to ostracize himself from our family, and I want nothing to do with someone capable of being so deliberately malicious. He knew that she was just beginning to heal the trauma that had been done to her; and had said what he did, specifically to hurt her. Someone capable of doing that will always be capable of doing it." "You might be surprised by how much people can change," She said, as she scribbled a few lines in her notepad. "Maybe," I said, brows furrowing. Those words had made their way into Melissa's nightmares. My fists clenched again, as I remembered all the times I was awoken in the middle of the night by her sobs. I remembered how helpless I felt, being able to do nothing but console her; and hold her until she fell back asleep. My knuckles were white, and my fists trembled slightly. I saw Dr. Clarke glance down at my hands, but she did not indicate what she was thinking. Therapists must make superb poker players. "Some things just can't be forgiven," I said quietly, forcing my hands to relax. "Again, you might be surprised. We can talk more about that next week." She set aside her notepad and glanced up at the clock on the wall behind me. "Now close your eyes, and concentrate on your breathing. Take a slow deep breath, imagining all your negative emotions as a tangible thing. Now breathe out slowly as all those emotions evaporate and exit your body like smoke. Again, deep inhale, and out. Good. Feel your mind become still as your breath carries away the pain. Once more, in, and out. Good." For some reason, this technique worked for me. If left alone, my thoughts naturally gravitated to the bad memories, and each one brought two more with it until I became overwhelmed. I would become mentally gridlocked to the point of not being able to function in everyday life. "When I say the word joy, what is the first thing that pops into your mind?" My eyes were still closed, and I smiled. "Melissa's face when she first saw me that October weekend reunion, at the cabin." "Good. Keep up your breathing exercise. All the pain is gone, only the joy remains. Describe the scene for me. What else do you see? What do you smell and hear?" A single tear rolled down my cheek. I'm not sure why I started to cry, whether it was joy in the image of her, so happy and full of promise for the future, or sorrow because that future is gone. I would never again see her smile. "Sunbeams cut down through the trees, lighting up smoke drifting from the fire pit. She passes through one, and her hair glows like golden fire. I smell the white pines, strong in the soft breeze, and the smell of burning oak. A loon call echoes up from the lake, and all around the cabin yard, there is the quiet burble of conversations and laughter." I wiped the tears from my face with a flannel shirt sleeve and looked away from Dr. Clarke. I still felt embarrassed to cry in front of another person. "That sounds lovely. Hold on to that moment, use it as a refuge." She glanced at the clock again and stood. I stood as well, taking a tissue from the box on the coffee table to dry my eyes. She walked me to her office door. "Thank you for sharing today, Charles. I think you are doing very well." As she opened the door, she asked. "Have you gone to the aromatherapy shop we talked about last week?" "No," I said dejectedly. "I was going to, but..." I had meant to go, but sometimes certain things were just impossible to make myself do. Going into an unfamiliar place and talking to a stranger was one of those things. Sometimes I could, sometimes I couldn't. This hadn't been a particularly good week, and the thought of talking to someone new, someone who would ask questions about why I was there, questions that would bring up painful memories, was simply unthinkable. Yesterday, I had made it all the way to my car and had the key in the ignition, but then I just sat there, unable to make myself go through with it. "That's ok." Said Dr. Clarke. I knew she knew why I didn't go, and I had gotten to the point where I felt safe sharing my feelings with her, but I couldn't help but feel a sense of shame. "Addy is very good at what she does, and she has helped many of my clients. She's a friend." I nodded and started moving through the doorway. Ending conversations always seemed so awkward. I never knew what to say. "Thank you for being so open today, Charles. See you again next week." She was looking at my eyes, and I met her gaze briefly before looking away. In recent years, I had become very uncomfortable making anything more than the briefest of eye contact with people, especially women, so I was usually at a huge disadvantage when it came to reading people's motivations and emotions. In that brief glimpse though, I caught the impression of empathy and a real desire to help. It felt really good to know that someone cared. I gave her a genuine smile and left. I left her office with the intention of going directly to the shop she had recommended, but by the time I was in my car, I just... couldn't. This is what my life had become. I could go from being on the verge of drowning in a sea of sorrow to feeling positive and optimistic in an instant, then back just as fast. But mostly, it was what I called 'the gray'. I am self-aware enough to understand how it began. Instead of dealing with certain traumatic events, my brain decided that it was easier and far less painful, just to push them aside. The problem is, that those things don't just go away. No matter how hard you push them down, they keep bubbling back up, and you end up pushing everything away in the effort. Then one day you realize that living in the gray was the only way to survive because every little bit of emotion, good or bad, could open the gates and let all the pain come rushing in. I had pushed everything and everyone aside for the sake of self-preservation, and it was killing me. I knew I needed help. I knew that the person I was, wasn't really me. The problem was, I had been in the gray so long, that I couldn't remember how it was before, not really. I knew that I had been happy once, that I had hopes and dreams. But that was all gone, lost in the gray. Chapter Nineteen. The next day turned out to be one of the good ones. I was able to get myself out of bed, dressed, and in the car. I decided that I would finally make it to this aromatherapy shop Dr. Clarke wanted me to go to. I turned the key in the ignition, and my geriatric Honda Civic purred to life. I quickly released the emergency brake and shifted into reverse. I backed out of my parking spot with a sigh. There, I did it. The hard part was over, and now that I had started the task, it would be easier to go through with it. Don't ask me why that makes sense, I wouldn't know how to even start explaining. I enjoyed my drive across town. It was a beautiful day in Duluth. Down near Lake Superior, it was a little breezy and a comfortable 65 degrees, perfect for driving with the windows down. Climbing the hill on 194, the farther I got away from the lake, the hotter it got. By the time I got to the shop, it was nearly 80 degrees, and I had begun to sweat. A typical July day in the Twin Ports. I've always said, that this was one of the things I loved most about living in Duluth. It could be hot as hell up on top of the hill, but if the wind was right, it was always cool near the lake. I shut the car off and set the E brake. I wiped a bit of sweat off my brow, and it occurred to me that I was wearing the same clothes I wore yesterday and that I hadn't showered. Hit with a sudden wave of shame and embarrassment about meeting someone new in this state, I almost just left to go back home. With an effort of willpower, I opened the car door and stepped out. Task begun. I walked in and was greeted by a smiling older lady that I assumed was Addy. "Hi, um, Dr. Clarke sent me." Addy's smile widened. "Oh, come in, come in. I'm Addy." "I'm Charles," I replied, meeting her eyes for the briefest moment. "Pleased to meet you, Charles. How is Rose doing these days?" Dr. Clarke's first name was Virginia. She had grown up in Virginia, Minnesota, and I think she was still annoyed by her unimaginative parents, because she liked to use her middle name, Rose. I almost exclusively used 'Dr. Clarke' when speaking with or about her. "I've been seeing her for a couple of months now. She's nice." I never seemed to know how to answer questions like that. I grimaced inwardly at my awkwardness. "She's a sweetheart, and good at her job. I saw her for years." She led me over to a glass counter filled with hundreds of small labeled bottles. "So, are we looking for something to help you relax?" "Something to help me remember." I paused briefly, trying to find the right words. "Well, remembering isn't the issue." I felt a rush of awkwardness and a little bit of embarrassment in talking about something so personal with a stranger. My cheeks flushed, and I looked at the bottles in the case to ensure I didn't accidentally make eye contact. "I want to be able to focus on just the one thing." "Tell me about it." I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths. "There's smoke from the campfire, mostly oak. Maybe a tiny bit of something acrid, like someone had thrown a plastic plate in the fire." As I spoke, I could hear Addy selecting a few bottles from a rack within the display case. "Pine trees. Even with the smoke, the pines smell strong." "Spruce?" Addy asked politely. "No, White Pine. The needles and sap are everywhere." "Anything else?" I took another deep breath but didn't reply. "Sometimes there's things around us that have a scent, but we're either too used to it, or its faint enough that we don't remember without smelling it. What else was there? Is this a campground?" Addy asked in what I recognized as being in a deliberately unobtrusive way. "It's a cabin," I replied, searching the mental image for things that may have a scent. "It's an old log cabin, surrounded by white pines. There's a log pile. My brother had been using the chainsaw earlier. My truck is parked in the driveway, it smells like gas because the tank leaks a little bit. Someone had mowed the little patch of grass in front of the cabin." "Is there anyone there, wearing perfume or aftershave?" I nodded my head in the affirmative. Addy gave me time to answer. "She..." I struggled to find words to describe Melissa's scent. How do you describe such a thing to someone? How do you describe a sunset to a blind person, or describe to a deaf person the emotions evoked by the Moonlight Sonata? She smelled like love, and I still smell her on the clothes I keep in her dresser. "You know how strawberry plants don't smell like strawberry? Not like the fake strawberry candy scent?" Of course, she did, but I went on. "A strawberry blossom. Delicate, faint, with just the promise of sweetness." "She was someone special," Addy said, in more of a statement than a question. "I ended up marrying her. She;" A tear rolled down my cheek. "Nine years ago;" I just couldn't force the words out of my mouth. I could tell Addy the exact date and time. I could tell her that we had just gone to see The Martian in the movie theater and that the night was clear and cool after the late August thunderstorm earlier that afternoon. I could tell her what song was playing on the radio. I could tell her the look on Melissa's face when the headlights crossed through the median in front of us. What I couldn't say, was physically unable to, was that nine years ago, Melissa died. "It's okay, dear," Addy said. She had a grandmotherly voice, full of kindness and understanding. For the briefest of moments, the power of that gentle voice made me believe that yes, everything would be okay. "Give me a few minutes, and I'll have something for you to try." I nodded and wandered away from the counter, absently browsing the candles and incense as I tried to compose myself. As I looked through the shop it occurred to me how posh the place seemed. High-dollar products are meant to be sold to people who have the luxury of ignoring price tags. I did not have that luxury. I felt anxiety and a general shame of the complete fuck up I had become. If this costs more than about forty dollars, I wouldn't be able to afford groceries this week. "Charles, it's ready," Addy called from the other side of the store. I walked over and closed my eyes as she extended a small glass bottle filled with clear liquid. I breathed deeply and conjured the scene in my mind. The scent of Addy's mixture hit me like a lightning bolt. It was like reading a book in the dark, and then someone turned on the lights. Everything came into sharp focus like I was there. The smoke, the pines, and, My breath caught in my throat. Buried deep within the mix there was something light, something so tenuous you hardly knew it was there. It was Melissa. In my mind, she threw herself into my arms, and I could smell her. I could smell her. "How?" I asked, looking her in the eyes for the first time since my initial glance. Addy smiled warmly, and I could see genuine care in her face, not just the politeness of a shop owner to a customer. "If she had been wearing perfume, it would have been harder. We remember scents much better than we think we do. Sometimes all we need is a little hint, and it's brought right to the front." Dr. Clarke was right, Addy was good. "Your idea about the strawberry flowers was good. They're very faint and don't smell like much at all, definitely not strawberries. But when you know that you have strawberry flowers, and you smell them, your brain brings up the memory of strawberries. Scents are all connected in our minds, and are rooted deep down at the very foundation of memory." Addy put a rubber stopper in the bottle and carefully placed the bottle in a velvet pouch with her shop's logo on it. She held it out for me to take. A tear dripped off my jaw, and I quickly wiped my face on a sleeve. "How much?" I started to ask, again acutely aware of my wrinkled clothes, my general lack of personal hygiene, and the depressingly small balance of my bank account. Addy cut me off with a raised hand. "Rose is a friend of mine, and any friend of hers is also a friend of mine." She pushed the velvet bag into my hands. "No, I can't;" Addy stopped me again. "Most of my clients just want something that smells nice in their bathroom, or to cover the smell of weed. I'm perfectly happy to take their money." She placed her hands on mine, still clutching the velvet bag. "It's very rare that I get to help someone. Take it as a gift, with my thanks." I was speechless, and fresh tears rolled down my face. I couldn't remember the last time someone was so altruistically kind to me. "Thank you." Was all I could say. To be continued in part 6. Based on a post by NewMountain80, in 6 parts, for Literotica.

Cabin Cousins: Part 5 The Gales of November. Based on a post by NewMountain80, in 6 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Connections. "Hmm" Melissa said, her face still buried in the pillow. She shifted and turned her head, and I moved to her side with one arm and a leg still draped over so we could look into each other's eyes. "Wow. That was..." She sighed. "...Wonderful." I smiled and kissed her cheek. "I'm glad you enjoyed it as much as I did." She squinted at me. "Are you sure I'm not dreaming, and you're just a figment of my imagination?" She said playfully, though I could tell there was something serious behind the question. "I'm real, and I'm right here, in your bed, and I love you." She searched my eyes for a moment, rolled onto her side, and pulled me in close, kissing me deeply. When we stopped kissing to catch our breath, she whispered. "It's our bed, and I love you too." We held each other in silence for a long while. I knew that she had something else to say, but I didn't push her. Eventually, she broke the silence. "Do you want pancakes? I want pancakes." Not exactly the soul-baring statement I was expecting, but now that she had said it, by damn I wanted pancakes. "I'll help." I had made pancakes exactly once before, and it wasn't a complete disaster, so I felt that my inclusion in the process wouldn't be too much of a hindrance. She got a distant look in her eye, then rolled onto her back, and covered her face with her hands with a groan. "I don't have any pancake mix." She peeked at me through her fingers and we both started laughing. I'm not sure why but we both found it hilarious but we roared with laughter. I playfully pushed her towards the side of the bed. "Well, get dressed. I'll take you out for breakfast." Still laughing, she got up and opened a dresser drawer. Stepping into a pair of light blue panties, she asked. "Are you getting dressed too, or are you going to go like that?" "I'm thinking about it." I quipped, eyes following her every movement. I loved watching her move. She had a litheness and grace to her. Cat-like? No, that's not quite right. Amazonian? Maybe, but that implies a stature and bulk that Melissa didn't have. She was fit, not body builder muscular, and she wasn't particularly tall, just shy of my own five foot ten. She was perfect, and my eyes couldn't get enough of her. Let's leave it at that. "You'll give the old ladies at Perkins quite a shock." She shot back, still laughing. With an exaggerated sigh, I rolled off the bed. "For the sake of the old ladies, fine, I'll get dressed." Chapter Sixteen. The plate clinked as Melissa set down her fork. "Ugh. I ate too much, but that really hit the spot." She had attacked her "tremendous twelve" meal with murderous intent. All that remained was a scrap of crust from a piece of toast, and some maple syrup residue on an otherwise clean plate. She had even swiped a strip of bacon off of my plate, an act that left fork marks on my brother's hands on several occasions. I looked at my plate, with its pile of hash browns and a third of a stack of pancakes remaining, and set down my fork. "I guess I didn't work up as much of an appetite as you, cause I'm stuffed too." Melissa looked at me with her special smile and mischievous eyes. "Well, you'll have to try harder next time." "I need to work out more." "I can help with that." She replied, and we both giggled, knowing the truth of it. "Let's start with a walk." We left the Perkins restaurant, and with Melissa navigating, we drove north out of Duluth on Hwy 61. We pulled off and parked where a little river crossed under the road and spilled through a steep set of rocky rapids to Lake Superior below. We hiked down a little trail, and she led me out onto one of the big rocks. The scenery was spectacular, and the water rushing past the rocks had a hypnotic quality. It hadn't snowed last night, but the wind was blowing hard off the lake, and the constant mist from the rapids gave the crisp early November air some real bite. We sat for a while without speaking. Just two people holding hands, taking in the scenery and the roar of the water. There was a Gordon Lightfoot song that had something about the gales of November, how did it go? "When I left home," Melissa began, just loud enough to hear. I turned and watched her, careful to hear what she was saying over the noise of the rapids. I had been hoping for, and dreading this moment, when she decided to get the details of her past out in the open. I resolved to not interrupt and to let her tell it at her own pace. "This was the first place I went." She continued. "I didn't know where to go. I didn't have anywhere to go." She sniffed. We were alone but had someone been watching, her running nose and the tears on her cheek might have been assumed to have been caused by the cold, but I knew differently. I could see the deep down hurt that was welling up, and my heart ached. I squeezed her hand, and let her talk. "Every night for two weeks, I'd leave school, then go up the hill to the mall and sit in the food court to do my homework. When the mall closed, I came here, and parked for the night right over there." She pointed up to the little parking lot where my truck was. "I'd wake up, scrape the snow and frost off the windows, and go to school. I didn't tell anyone because then I'd have to explain why I was sleeping in a car in February. I had friends, but not close friends, you know? Like, not the kind of friends that I could talk to about..." She trailed off and wiped her nose on her jacket sleeve. "I had been lucky, it hadn't been as cold as it should have been, but then one night it got very cold. When I left the mall, I knew if I spent the night here again, I could be in serious danger. So I went to the laundromat. There was never anyone in there in the middle of the night, so I sat at one of the tables and fell asleep. The owner woke me up a couple of hours later, yelling at me that I couldn't sleep there, so I got in my car and came back here." She had been looking at the water as she spoke, but now turned and looked at me. I saw the fear and shame these memories invoked. I wanted to say something, anything to comfort her, but I knew that I should let her say what she needed to say, so I let her continue. "When I went to sleep on the back seat, I didn't think I was going to ever wake up, and I was okay with that. I didn't care that I was going to die. Nobody cared, nobody would miss me. The world would be better off without one more stupid girl. Why bother going on?" She looked away from me, east towards the vast lake, and her face twisted up in anger. "You know, the worst thing, the worst part of all of it, is they made me feel like it was all my fault. They had me so twisted up, that I believed that I was the cause of everything that happened." She turned back to me, the anger fading, leaving just a profound sadness. I wiped the tears from her cheek, and she leaned her shoulder against me. "Did your parents tell you what happened?" My throat was dry, and I swallowed hard before replying. "They were vague." She gave a little smile that was like a sunbeam on a stormy day. "I asked your mom and dad not to tell anyone. You're so lucky to have them." She looked back to the lake and spoke quietly enough that if her face had not been right next to mine, I wouldn't have been able to hear her. "When I was fifteen, when I started looking more like a woman, and less like a little girl, my dad started abusing me. Mom, she was drunk more than she was sober. She knew, she had to know, and she didn't do anything." As the River roared in its ceaseless path to Lake Superior, and the cold wind whistled and rattled through the leafless trees, Melissa spoke of abuse and divorce, lost jobs and social status, the failing of the system to help a girl who was too scared to ask for help and the blame that was assigned for all of it. "So that night, I remember when the state trooper knocked on my window." She gave a brief mirthless huff. "I thought he was an angel, with the way his flashlight lit up the frost on the inside of the window. I thought I was dead, that it was all over. I felt relieved." She shook her head. "The next thing I remember was being in a hospital bed, wrapped in electric blankets, and seeing the sunrise through the window. That trooper was there. He had stayed with me, way past the end of his shift, just to make sure I was alright. Turns out, when they went to my parent's house to see what was going on, my dad was out of town, and my mom ended up getting arrested for assaulting an officer and having a bunch of heroin. That's why she went back to him. Not for me, but for the money to buy her drugs. The trooper persuaded me to reach out to my friends. He said that people can be capable of unexpected acts of kindness, and I decided to believe him. So I called Ashley. We had always gotten along pretty well, and her parents were always super nice to me. They let me stay with them, which was really awkward at first. I just couldn't believe that a family could be so, so perfect. It was like stepping into an old sitcom. Maybe there was a little trouble now and then, but everyone loved each other, and it all worked out in the end. It was surreal, but eventually, I started believing that it was how families should be. That it was right and good, and normal." She looked me in the eyes then, and I saw her love burning through the hurt. "I didn't think that I would ever have that. I thought that there was no way I could ever open up and let someone love me, to be me, to be normal. Who could want me? Then your parents invited me back to the cabin, and I grasped onto a foolish hope that maybe you could. Ever since it's just been, It just doesn't seem real. Charles, I know you love me, but I'm still so afraid." I silenced her with a quick kiss on the lips. I held her cold, rosy cheeks in my hands and looked her in the eyes. "None of what happened was your fault. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be loved. I love you, I will always love you. Nothing in the past, present, or future will stop me from loving you until the end of time, and when we're both gone from this world, I'll find you in the next and keep loving you!" Fresh tears streamed down her face, not tears of remembered pain, but tears of joyful love. She threw her arms around me and we held each other tight. Overhead, a hawk called, adding its little part to the scene of wind, water, and young lovers. Chapter Seventeen. Getting in my truck and leaving Duluth that evening was the hardest thing I had ever done. The only thing that gave me the strength to leave was the knowledge that it was only temporary. Soon, very soon, I would never have to leave her again. When I got home, Mom was at the kitchen table reading a newspaper. She greeted me with a smile. I had to be very careful with how I was going to handle this conversation. I didn't want to lie to my mom, but I also didn't want to tell her the whole truth. "How was your weekend? I didn't get a call from the cops, so it couldn't have been too exciting." "I was the cop! We went to a Halloween party dressed as the Village People." "Fun!" Mom exclaimed, giving me a beaming smile. "Yeah, and something else happened. Do you know how I can get my employee discount at any store? Well, we stopped at one of the stores in Duluth, and I ended up talking with the yard manager. They've been having trouble finding someone competent to drive a forklift, and if I transferred up there, they'd give me a raise and make me an assistant manager. He said I could start working up there in two weeks." All of these individual facts were technically true, but it still felt like lying. "Good for you! It's great to have in-demand skills. That's a long way to drive though." "Yeah, it would be like, five hours of driving every day." "Did you look into getting an apartment up there?" Mom folded up the newspaper and gave me her undivided attention. "After the school year starts, there's literally nothing cheap available." "Where would you stay then?" She asked, looking concerned. "Well, on the way home, I was thinking about who I know that lives up there. Rob lives in a dorm, so I couldn't get away with staying there long-term. But then I remembered that Melissa lives in Duluth, I could maybe call her and see if she wants a roommate." Okay, this last bit was a lie. I didn't feel good about it, but it had to be done. "Our Melissa? Have you called her yet?" "Not yet. I'm pretty sure I have her number in my phone." "You should figure this out sooner rather than later." She looked at the clock. "It's not too late, give her a call now." I made a show of finding Melissa's number as if I hadn't memorized it weeks ago. Melissa and I had rehearsed this moment. I had the volume on my phone turned way up, so my mom was sure to hear Melissa's side of the conversation too. "Hello?" Melissa's angelic voice asked after three rings. "Hi Melissa, it's Charles." "Charles! It's good to hear from you! What's up?" "Well, I'm going to be transferring up there for work, and I was wondering if you would mind having me as a roommate until I found a place of my own." Another necessary lie. "Yeah, I guess that would be okay. You're not going to find anywhere else to stay until the end of the school year. Even then, I was lucky to get this place, this spring." "So, you're okay with me staying with you?" "Yeah, it'll be fun. Like staying at the cabin, but I don't think my landlord would approve of campfires." "I'll pay half the rent, and utilities, and everything." "Naturally," Melissa said. "I was going to ask one of my friends if they wanted to move in. Only paying half the rent will make saving for school a lot easier." "Cool. So, I guess I'll give you a call tomorrow, and we can figure out the details?" "Yeah, okay." "I'm talking with my mom right now, so I should probably let you go." "Hi Mom!" Melissa yelled. "Hi, Melissa," Mom replied, loud enough to be sure that the phone picked it up. "Talk to you tomorrow, bye!" Melissa said, much quieter this time. "Bye." I had to be very careful not to reflexively say I love you. I put my phone away and noticed that my mom was studying me with a funny little smile on her face. Then in the most casual tone, she asked. "So, does she love you as much as you love her?" My heart nearly stopped. I couldn't respond. "That was a lovely charade. Unnecessary, but lovely." I couldn't speak. My brain frantically searched for words but found only shocked silence. "Oh, honey." She began, in a soothing motherly voice. "You're my baby. Did you think I wouldn't know? It was plain to see at the cabin that you two are in love. You spent the weekend with her?" I forced myself to reply. "Yes," I said, fearing that it was all over. I felt like crying. "Good," Mom said simply. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Mom knew about me and Melissa, and she was... Happy for me? "So, you're not mad about us?" "Oh, Charles. Love is so precious. It doesn't matter where you find it, but when you do, you hold on with both hands and never let go." My tears came then, flowing hard as I released all my pent-up fears and anxiety. Mom held me as I cried on her shoulder. She gently rubbed my back like she used to do when I was a kid. When my crying subsided, she held my shoulders at arm's length. "Now, tell me about her." I did. In the conversation that followed, I was more honest and open about my feelings than I could remember being to anyone other than Melissa. I explained how we knew what each other was thinking or feeling, just by looking into each other's eyes. I told her how I wanted to improve myself, to be a better person for Melissa. And, looking back on it with a touch of horror, I did my best to explain the connection I felt with Melissa when we made love. Throughout it all, my mother was nothing but caring and understanding. After all the fear of this moment, it was surreal. It felt so good, so liberating to tell her how I felt about Melissa. When I was done, I asked Mom. "Does Dad know?" "Oh, I doubt he picked up on it." "Are you going to tell him?" Of all the people in the family, I was sure that Dad would be the least likely to accept. He had always been very traditional. Kind and gentle, but with a very strict moral compass. "Of course. He's my husband. The way you feel about Melissa, I feel about him." She hugged me again. "Don't be ashamed. Love her with all your heart, and everything else will work itself out." She kissed me on the cheek and told me that she loved me. I told her that I loved her too, and said goodnight. I went to my bedroom, shut the door, and called Melissa. "What's up?" She answered. "I didn't think I'd hear from you until tomorrow." Deciding to just be direct about it, I said. "My mother has officially given us her blessing." The line was silent as Melissa processed this. When she spoke, I could tell that she was crying. "How did she find out?" She asked. I recounted the whole conversation. "See? I told you your mom was the best." "She really is." "So, what now?" She asked, with a bit of anxiety. "She said that she had to tell everyone because it's better to have it out in the open than have to keep lying to the family. I agreed." After a short pause, Melissa said. "Me too." As it turns out, my family's reaction was both better than I had feared and worse than I had hoped. My parents had called a family meeting and all of my immediate family, and their spouses, showed up. There were those like my mom, and my brother Mark, who were supportive and genuinely happy for me. On the other end of things, there were people like my second older brother, Stephen, and his wife, who were disgusted and called me a pervert. Most were somewhere in the middle, either not understanding and being polite about it, or just ambivalent to the whole issue. Then there was my dad. He just sat there the whole time, with a frown on his face, and never spoke a word. I couldn't tell if he was ashamed, or angry, or what, and it tore me up inside. He had never in his life been shy about voicing his opinion. After my mom, he was who I needed acceptance from the most. I desperately wanted him to say something, anything, but he never did. His silence cut deeper than any insult or accusation ever could. At the beginning, and with prompting from my mom, I had stood before everyone, confessing Melissa's and my love for each other, and that I was moving out to live with her in Duluth. After the initial shock and spectrum of reactions, I sat down and answered questions. Now, not being able to bear my father's silence any longer, I stood again, interrupting several side conversations. I addressed the whole group, but my words were meant for my father more than anyone. "Melissa and I truly love each other. Nothing you do or say can change it. Accept it, accept us, or don't. I don't care." Dad didn't react, didn't even look me in the eyes. I rushed to my room and locked the door. I curled up on my bed and cried, harder than I could remember ever crying before. The stress of the family meeting and my dad's non-reaction had utterly destroyed me. I held a pillow over my head to muffle the sounds of my uncontrollable sobs, and to hide my face from the world. "What if they're right about you?" A part of my mind asked. "What if you're just a sicko. That's what they all think." "No! I really do love her!" Another part of my mind answered. "What kind of weirdo falls in love with his cousin? What kind of deviant fucks someone in his own family?" "No! Our love is pure and perfect!" "Yeah, perfect. The perfect fantasy of a clinically twisted pervert! You're just taking advantage of a poor broken girl." "No..." I moaned aloud, holding my head in my hands. Sometime after, someone knocked lightly on my bedroom door. I ignored it, lost as I was in terrible contradictory thoughts. The knock came again, and I heard my mom's voice. "Charles, honey. Can I come in?" I didn't respond, knowing that right then I couldn't bear to face anyone, even my mother. "Oh, my baby." She said through the door. "All I want is for you to be happy. Follow your heart, everything will work out. I love you." Her words quieted the thoughts whirling through my mind, and though my sobs faded, the tears continued to flow. I was exhausted, physically and emotionally. I closed my eyes and imagined Melissa lying next to me. I thought about how if she were here, she would comfort me, and wipe the tears from my face. I could see her so clearly in my mind, see how her icy blue eyes would pour her inexhaustible love into me. Soon, my tears stopped flowing, and I regained a sense of peace. I felt awful for doubting myself, for doubting Melissa, if even for a moment. Our love is right. It is pure and perfect. She made me complete, as I made her complete. I drifted off to sleep, with a smile on my face, thinking about Melissa, and dreaming about the future. Chapter Eighteen. Charles copes with changes, but the biggest is yet to happen. The armrests of the padded chair where I was seated were a little too high to be comfortable, so I kept my hands folded in my lap. I gazed at the paintings of calm rural scenes hung on the walls of the spacious office. I wondered absently if they were real places or just the artist's impression of idyllic country life. I glanced at the woman in the matching chair positioned across from me. She was patiently waiting for me to continue my story, with an encouraging expression on her face. "I moved my things into Melissa's apartment a few days later and spent the night with her a couple of times when I had the day off. After the two weeks were up, I started work at the Duluth store and lived with her from then on. I think the only word to describe the years that followed is heavenly. I wouldn't have changed a single thing." "Tell me more about how your family reacted," said the woman, Dr. Clarke. "Did your father and brother ever come around?" "Dad? Yeah, he just needed a little time to process it. After that, he was as good with it as Mom was. The thing with him was, years before, before anyone knew what had been going on with Melissa's dad, he'd known that something was wrong. I'm not sure how, but he knew. After Melissa left home, he would call and check in on her. He paid to have her car fixed and even paid the deposit on her apartment. He always went out of his way to make her feel like she had people that cared. I think he loved her as if she were his own daughter, so the whole thing with the two of us was kind of a shock. When Melissa and I went to my parent's place for Thanksgiving, later that month; and he saw firsthand how happy she was, it wasn't an issue." "And your brother, Stephen?" Dr. Clarke prompted. "That same Thanksgiving, I ended up knocking him down with a punch to the face. He said that Melissa's family were all degenerates and that Melissa was just bringing that degeneracy to our family now. That was the last time I ever saw him." I forced my clenched fists to relax and laid my palms flat on my thighs. "Have you ever thought about reaching out to him? People can change a lot in twenty-four years." "No," I said firmly. "It was his choice to ostracize himself from our family, and I want nothing to do with someone capable of being so deliberately malicious. He knew that she was just beginning to heal the trauma that had been done to her; and had said what he did, specifically to hurt her. Someone capable of doing that will always be capable of doing it." "You might be surprised by how much people can change," She said, as she scribbled a few lines in her notepad. "Maybe," I said, brows furrowing. Those words had made their way into Melissa's nightmares. My fists clenched again, as I remembered all the times I was awoken in the middle of the night by her sobs. I remembered how helpless I felt, being able to do nothing but console her; and hold her until she fell back asleep. My knuckles were white, and my fists trembled slightly. I saw Dr. Clarke glance down at my hands, but she did not indicate what she was thinking. Therapists must make superb poker players. "Some things just can't be forgiven," I said quietly, forcing my hands to relax. "Again, you might be surprised. We can talk more about that next week." She set aside her notepad and glanced up at the clock on the wall behind me. "Now close your eyes, and concentrate on your breathing. Take a slow deep breath, imagining all your negative emotions as a tangible thing. Now breathe out slowly as all those emotions evaporate and exit your body like smoke. Again, deep inhale, and out. Good. Feel your mind become still as your breath carries away the pain. Once more, in, and out. Good." For some reason, this technique worked for me. If left alone, my thoughts naturally gravitated to the bad memories, and each one brought two more with it until I became overwhelmed. I would become mentally gridlocked to the point of not being able to function in everyday life. "When I say the word joy, what is the first thing that pops into your mind?" My eyes were still closed, and I smiled. "Melissa's face when she first saw me that October weekend reunion, at the cabin." "Good. Keep up your breathing exercise. All the pain is gone, only the joy remains. Describe the scene for me. What else do you see? What do you smell and hear?" A single tear rolled down my cheek. I'm not sure why I started to cry, whether it was joy in the image of her, so happy and full of promise for the future, or sorrow because that future is gone. I would never again see her smile. "Sunbeams cut down through the trees, lighting up smoke drifting from the fire pit. She passes through one, and her hair glows like golden fire. I smell the white pines, strong in the soft breeze, and the smell of burning oak. A loon call echoes up from the lake, and all around the cabin yard, there is the quiet burble of conversations and laughter." I wiped the tears from my face with a flannel shirt sleeve and looked away from Dr. Clarke. I still felt embarrassed to cry in front of another person. "That sounds lovely. Hold on to that moment, use it as a refuge." She glanced at the clock again and stood. I stood as well, taking a tissue from the box on the coffee table to dry my eyes. She walked me to her office door. "Thank you for sharing today, Charles. I think you are doing very well." As she opened the door, she asked. "Have you gone to the aromatherapy shop we talked about last week?" "No," I said dejectedly. "I was going to, but..." I had meant to go, but sometimes certain things were just impossible to make myself do. Going into an unfamiliar place and talking to a stranger was one of those things. Sometimes I could, sometimes I couldn't. This hadn't been a particularly good week, and the thought of talking to someone new, someone who would ask questions about why I was there, questions that would bring up painful memories, was simply unthinkable. Yesterday, I had made it all the way to my car and had the key in the ignition, but then I just sat there, unable to make myself go through with it. "That's ok." Said Dr. Clarke. I knew she knew why I didn't go, and I had gotten to the point where I felt safe sharing my feelings with her, but I couldn't help but feel a sense of shame. "Addy is very good at what she does, and she has helped many of my clients. She's a friend." I nodded and started moving through the doorway. Ending conversations always seemed so awkward. I never knew what to say. "Thank you for being so open today, Charles. See you again next week." She was looking at my eyes, and I met her gaze briefly before looking away. In recent years, I had become very uncomfortable making anything more than the briefest of eye contact with people, especially women, so I was usually at a huge disadvantage when it came to reading people's motivations and emotions. In that brief glimpse though, I caught the impression of empathy and a real desire to help. It felt really good to know that someone cared. I gave her a genuine smile and left. I left her office with the intention of going directly to the shop she had recommended, but by the time I was in my car, I just... couldn't. This is what my life had become. I could go from being on the verge of drowning in a sea of sorrow to feeling positive and optimistic in an instant, then back just as fast. But mostly, it was what I called 'the gray'. I am self-aware enough to understand how it began. Instead of dealing with certain traumatic events, my brain decided that it was easier and far less painful, just to push them aside. The problem is, that those things don't just go away. No matter how hard you push them down, they keep bubbling back up, and you end up pushing everything away in the effort. Then one day you realize that living in the gray was the only way to survive because every little bit of emotion, good or bad, could open the gates and let all the pain come rushing in. I had pushed everything and everyone aside for the sake of self-preservation, and it was killing me. I knew I needed help. I knew that the person I was, wasn't really me. The problem was, I had been in the gray so long, that I couldn't remember how it was before, not really. I knew that I had been happy once, that I had hopes and dreams. But that was all gone, lost in the gray. Chapter Nineteen. The next day turned out to be one of the good ones. I was able to get myself out of bed, dressed, and in the car. I decided that I would finally make it to this aromatherapy shop Dr. Clarke wanted me to go to. I turned the key in the ignition, and my geriatric Honda Civic purred to life. I quickly released the emergency brake and shifted into reverse. I backed out of my parking spot with a sigh. There, I did it. The hard part was over, and now that I had started the task, it would be easier to go through with it. Don't ask me why that makes sense, I wouldn't know how to even start explaining. I enjoyed my drive across town. It was a beautiful day in Duluth. Down near Lake Superior, it was a little breezy and a comfortable 65 degrees, perfect for driving with the windows down. Climbing the hill on 194, the farther I got away from the lake, the hotter it got. By the time I got to the shop, it was nearly 80 degrees, and I had begun to sweat. A typical July day in the Twin Ports. I've always said, that this was one of the things I loved most about living in Duluth. It could be hot as hell up on top of the hill, but if the wind was right, it was always cool near the lake. I shut the car off and set the E brake. I wiped a bit of sweat off my brow, and it occurred to me that I was wearing the same clothes I wore yesterday and that I hadn't showered. Hit with a sudden wave of shame and embarrassment about meeting someone new in this state, I almost just left to go back home. With an effort of willpower, I opened the car door and stepped out. Task begun. I walked in and was greeted by a smiling older lady that I assumed was Addy. "Hi, um, Dr. Clarke sent me." Addy's smile widened. "Oh, come in, come in. I'm Addy." "I'm Charles," I replied, meeting her eyes for the briefest moment. "Pleased to meet you, Charles. How is Rose doing these days?" Dr. Clarke's first name was Virginia. She had grown up in Virginia, Minnesota, and I think she was still annoyed by her unimaginative parents, because she liked to use her middle name, Rose. I almost exclusively used 'Dr. Clarke' when speaking with or about her. "I've been seeing her for a couple of months now. She's nice." I never seemed to know how to answer questions like that. I grimaced inwardly at my awkwardness. "She's a sweetheart, and good at her job. I saw her for years." She led me over to a glass counter filled with hundreds of small labeled bottles. "So, are we looking for something to help you relax?" "Something to help me remember." I paused briefly, trying to find the right words. "Well, remembering isn't the issue." I felt a rush of awkwardness and a little bit of embarrassment in talking about something so personal with a stranger. My cheeks flushed, and I looked at the bottles in the case to ensure I didn't accidentally make eye contact. "I want to be able to focus on just the one thing." "Tell me about it." I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths. "There's smoke from the campfire, mostly oak. Maybe a tiny bit of something acrid, like someone had thrown a plastic plate in the fire." As I spoke, I could hear Addy selecting a few bottles from a rack within the display case. "Pine trees. Even with the smoke, the pines smell strong." "Spruce?" Addy asked politely. "No, White Pine. The needles and sap are everywhere." "Anything else?" I took another deep breath but didn't reply. "Sometimes there's things around us that have a scent, but we're either too used to it, or its faint enough that we don't remember without smelling it. What else was there? Is this a campground?" Addy asked in what I recognized as being in a deliberately unobtrusive way. "It's a cabin," I replied, searching the mental image for things that may have a scent. "It's an old log cabin, surrounded by white pines. There's a log pile. My brother had been using the chainsaw earlier. My truck is parked in the driveway, it smells like gas because the tank leaks a little bit. Someone had mowed the little patch of grass in front of the cabin." "Is there anyone there, wearing perfume or aftershave?" I nodded my head in the affirmative. Addy gave me time to answer. "She..." I struggled to find words to describe Melissa's scent. How do you describe such a thing to someone? How do you describe a sunset to a blind person, or describe to a deaf person the emotions evoked by the Moonlight Sonata? She smelled like love, and I still smell her on the clothes I keep in her dresser. "You know how strawberry plants don't smell like strawberry? Not like the fake strawberry candy scent?" Of course, she did, but I went on. "A strawberry blossom. Delicate, faint, with just the promise of sweetness." "She was someone special," Addy said, in more of a statement than a question. "I ended up marrying her. She;" A tear rolled down my cheek. "Nine years ago;" I just couldn't force the words out of my mouth. I could tell Addy the exact date and time. I could tell her that we had just gone to see The Martian in the movie theater and that the night was clear and cool after the late August thunderstorm earlier that afternoon. I could tell her what song was playing on the radio. I could tell her the look on Melissa's face when the headlights crossed through the median in front of us. What I couldn't say, was physically unable to, was that nine years ago, Melissa died. "It's okay, dear," Addy said. She had a grandmotherly voice, full of kindness and understanding. For the briefest of moments, the power of that gentle voice made me believe that yes, everything would be okay. "Give me a few minutes, and I'll have something for you to try." I nodded and wandered away from the counter, absently browsing the candles and incense as I tried to compose myself. As I looked through the shop it occurred to me how posh the place seemed. High-dollar products are meant to be sold to people who have the luxury of ignoring price tags. I did not have that luxury. I felt anxiety and a general shame of the complete fuck up I had become. If this costs more than about forty dollars, I wouldn't be able to afford groceries this week. "Charles, it's ready," Addy called from the other side of the store. I walked over and closed my eyes as she extended a small glass bottle filled with clear liquid. I breathed deeply and conjured the scene in my mind. The scent of Addy's mixture hit me like a lightning bolt. It was like reading a book in the dark, and then someone turned on the lights. Everything came into sharp focus like I was there. The smoke, the pines, and, My breath caught in my throat. Buried deep within the mix there was something light, something so tenuous you hardly knew it was there. It was Melissa. In my mind, she threw herself into my arms, and I could smell her. I could smell her. "How?" I asked, looking her in the eyes for the first time since my initial glance. Addy smiled warmly, and I could see genuine care in her face, not just the politeness of a shop owner to a customer. "If she had been wearing perfume, it would have been harder. We remember scents much better than we think we do. Sometimes all we need is a little hint, and it's brought right to the front." Dr. Clarke was right, Addy was good. "Your idea about the strawberry flowers was good. They're very faint and don't smell like much at all, definitely not strawberries. But when you know that you have strawberry flowers, and you smell them, your brain brings up the memory of strawberries. Scents are all connected in our minds, and are rooted deep down at the very foundation of memory." Addy put a rubber stopper in the bottle and carefully placed the bottle in a velvet pouch with her shop's logo on it. She held it out for me to take. A tear dripped off my jaw, and I quickly wiped my face on a sleeve. "How much?" I started to ask, again acutely aware of my wrinkled clothes, my general lack of personal hygiene, and the depressingly small balance of my bank account. Addy cut me off with a raised hand. "Rose is a friend of mine, and any friend of hers is also a friend of mine." She pushed the velvet bag into my hands. "No, I can't;" Addy stopped me again. "Most of my clients just want something that smells nice in their bathroom, or to cover the smell of weed. I'm perfectly happy to take their money." She placed her hands on mine, still clutching the velvet bag. "It's very rare that I get to help someone. Take it as a gift, with my thanks." I was speechless, and fresh tears rolled down my face. I couldn't remember the last time someone was so altruistically kind to me. "Thank you." Was all I could say. To be continued in part 6. Based on a post by NewMountain80, in 6 parts, for Literotica.

Send us a textMelody runs her first ultra post partum by completing the White Pine Solstice 55k!Jacob and Melody discuss the challenges of training postpartum, the mental hurdles faced, and the unique approach to nutrition and fitness that Melody adopted. The conversation also touches on the importance of mindset in overcoming fears and the lessons learned from their respective races, including insights into race preparation and the significance of personal growth through running.Looking to run your first 100? Apply for Coaching here --> https://trailto100.com/coaching/Want to support the podcast? Buy a shirt here --> https://trailto100.com/races/Thanks for listening! If you want to run 100 miles, Make it Happen!Support the show

Family Care Counselor with White Pine Funeral Services

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication (and my full-time job). To receive new posts and to support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.WhoChris Cushing, Principal of Mountain Planning at SE GroupRecorded onApril 3, 2025About SE GroupFrom the company's website:WE AREMountain planners, landscape architects, environmental analysts, and community and recreation planners. From master planning to conceptual design and permitting, we are your trusted partner in creating exceptional experiences and places.WE BELIEVEThat human and ecological wellbeing forms the foundation for thriving communities.WE EXISTTo enrich people's lives through the power of outdoor recreation.If that doesn't mean anything to you, then this will:Why I interviewed himNature versus nurture: God throws together the recipe, we bake the casserole. A way to explain humans. Sure he's six foot nine, but his mom dropped him into the intensive knitting program at Montessori school 232, so he can't play basketball for s**t. Or identical twins, separated at birth. One grows up as Sir Rutherford Ignacious Beaumont XIV and invents time travel. The other grows up as Buford and is the number seven at Okey-Doke's Quick Oil Change & Cannabis Emporium. The guts matter a lot, but so does the food.This is true of ski areas as well. An earthquake here, a glacier there, maybe a volcanic eruption, and, presto: a non-flat part of the earth on which we may potentially ski. The rest is up to us.It helps if nature was thoughtful enough to add slopes of varying but consistent pitch, a suitable rise from top to bottom, a consistent supply of snow, a flat area at the base, and some sort of natural conduit through which to move people and vehicles. But none of that is strictly necessary. Us humans (nurture), can punch green trails across solid-black fall lines (Jackson Hole), bulldoze a bigger hill (Caberfae), create snow where the clouds decline to (Wintergreen, 2022-23), plant the resort base at the summit (Blue Knob), or send skiers by boat (Eaglecrest).Someone makes all that happen. In North America, that someone is often SE Group, or their competitor, Ecosign. SE Group helps ski areas evolve into even better ski areas. That means helping to plan terrain expansions, lift replacements, snowmaking upgrades, transit connections, parking enhancements, and whatever built environment is under the ski area's control. SE Group is often the machine behind those Forest Service ski area master development plans that I so often spotlight. For example, Vail Mountain:When I talk about Alta consolidating seven slow lifts into four fast lifts; or Little Switzerland carving their mini-kingdom into beginner, parkbrah, and racer domains; or Mount Bachelor boosting its power supply to run more efficiently, this is the sort of thing that SE plots out (I'm not certain if they were involved in any or all of those projects).Analyzing this deliberate crafting of a natural bump into a human playground is the core of what The Storm is. I love, skiing, sure, but specifically lift-served skiing. I'm sure it's great to commune with the raccoons or whatever it is you people do when you discuss “skinning” and “AT setups.” But nature left a few things out. Such as: ski patrol, evacuation sleds, avalanche control, toilet paper, water fountains, firepits, and a place to charge my phone. Oh and chairlifts. And directional signs with trail ratings. And a snack bar.Skiing is torn between competing and contradictory narratives: the misanthropic, which hates crowds and most skiers not deemed sufficiently hardcore; the naturalistic, which mistakes ski resorts with the bucolic experience that is only possible in the backcountry; the preservationist, with its museum-ish aspirations to glasswall the obsolete; the hyperactive, insisting on all fast lifts and groomed runs; the fatalists, who assume inevitable death-of-concept in a warming world.None of these quite gets it. Ski areas are centers of joy and memory and bonhomie and possibility. But they are also (mostly), businesses. They are also parks, designed to appeal to as many skiers as possible. They are centers of organized risk, softened to minimize catastrophic outcomes. They must enlist machine aid to complement natural snowfall and move skiers up those meddlesome but necessary hills. Ski areas are nature, softened and smoothed and labelled by their civilized stewards, until the land is not exactly a representation of either man or God, but a strange and wonderful hybrid of both.What we talked aboutOld-school Cottonwoods vibe; “the Ikon Pass has just changed the industry so dramatically”; how to become a mountain planner for a living; what the mountain-planning vocation looked like in the mid-1980s; the detachable lift arrives; how to consolidate lifts without sacrificing skier experience; when is a lift not OK?; a surface lift resurgence?; how sanctioned glades changed ski areas; the evolution of terrain parks away from mega-features; the importance of terrain parks to small ski areas; reworking trails to reduce skier collisions; the curse of the traverse; making Jackson more approachable; on terrain balance; how megapasses are redistributing skier visits; how to expand a ski area without making traffic worse; ski areas that could evolve into major destinations; and ski area as public park or piece of art.What I got wrong* I blanked on the name of the famous double chair at A-Basin. It is Pallavicini.* I called Crystal Mountain's two-seater served terrain “North Country or whatever” – it is actually called “Northway.”* I said that Deer Valley would become the fourth- or fifth-largest ski resort in the nation once its expansion was finished. It will become the sixth-largest, at 4,926 acres, when the next expansion phase opens for winter 2025-26, and will become the fourth-largest, at 5,726 acres, at full build out.* I estimated Kendall Mountain's current lift-served ski footprint at 200 vertical feet; it is 240 feet.Why now was a good time for this interviewWe have a tendency, particularly in outdoor circles, to lionize the natural and shame the human. Development policy in the United States leans heavily toward “don't,” even in areas already designated for intensive recreation. We mustn't, plea activists: expand the Palisades Tahoe base village; build a gondola up Little Cottonwood Canyon; expand ski terrain contiguous with already-existing ski terrain at Grand Targhee.I understand these impulses, but I believe they are misguided. Intensive but thoughtful, human-scaled development directly within and adjacent to already-disturbed lands is the best way to limit the larger-scale, long-term manmade footprint that chews up vast natural tracts. That is: build 1,000 beds in what is now a bleak parking lot at Palisades Tahoe, and you limit the need for homes to be carved out of surrounding forests, and for hundreds of cars to daytrip into the ski area. Done right, you even create a walkable community of the sort that America conspicuously lacks.To push back against, and gradually change, the Culture of No fueling America's mountain town livability crises, we need exhibits of these sorts of projects actually working. More Whistlers (built from scratch in the 1980s to balance tourism and community) and fewer Aspens (grandfathered into ski town status with a classic street and building grid, but compromised by profiteers before we knew any better). This is the sort of work SE is doing: how do we build a better interface between civilization and nature, so that the former complements, rather than spoils, the latter?All of which is a little tangential to this particular podcast conversation, which focuses mostly on the ski areas themselves. But America's ski centers, established largely in the middle of the last century, are aging with the towns around them. Just about everything, from lifts to lodges to roads to pipes, has reached replacement age. Replacement is a burden, but also an opportunity to create a better version of something. Our ski areas will not only have faster lifts and newer snowguns – they will have fewer lifts and fewer guns that carry more people and make more snow, just as our built footprint, thoughtfully designed, can provide more homes for more people on less space and deliver more skiers with fewer vehicles.In a way, this podcast is almost a canonical Storm conversation. It should, perhaps, have been episode one, as every conversation since has dealt with some version of this question: how do humans sculpt a little piece of nature into a snowy park that we visit for fun? That is not an easy or obvious question to answer, which is why SE Group exists. Much as I admire our rough-and-tumble Dave McCoy-type founders, that improvisational style is trickier to execute in our highly regulated, activist present.And so we rely on artist-architects of the SE sort, who inject the natural with the human without draining what is essential from either. Done well, this crafted experience feels wild. Done poorly – as so much of our legacy built environment has been – and you generate resistance to future development, even if that future development is better. But no one falls in love with a blueprint. Experiencing a ski area as whatever it is you think a ski area should be is something you have to feel. And though there is a sort of magic animating places like Alta and Taos and Mammoth and Mad River Glen and Mount Bohemia, some ineffable thing that bleeds from the earth, these ski areas are also outcomes of a human-driven process, a determination to craft the best version of skiing that could exist for mass human consumption on that shred of the planet.Podcast NotesOn MittersillMittersill, now part of Cannon Mountain, was once a separate ski area. It petered out in the mid-‘80s, then became a sort of Cannon backcountry zone circa 2009. The Mittersill double arrived in 2010, followed by a T-bar in 2016.On chairlift consolidationI mention several ski areas that replaced a bunch of lifts with fewer lifts:The HighlandsIn 2023, Boyne-owned The Highlands wiped out three ancient Riblet triples and replaced them with this glorious bubble six-pack:Here's a before-and-after:Vernon Valley-Great Gorge/Mountain CreekI've called Intrawest's transformation of Vernon Valley-Great Gorge into Mountain Creek “perhaps the largest single-season overhaul of a ski area in the history of lift-served skiing.” Maybe someone can prove me wrong, but just look at this place circa 1989:It looked substantively the same in 1998, when, in a single summer, Intrawest tore out 18 lifts – 15 double chairs, two platters, and a T-bar, plus God knows how many ropetows – and replaced them with two high-speed quads, two fixed-grip quads, and a bucket-style Cabriolet lift that every normal ski area uses as a parking lot transit machine:I discussed this incredible transformation with current Hermitage Club GM Bill Benneyan, who worked at Mountain Creek in 1998, back in 2020:I misspoke on the podcast, saying that Intrawest had pulled out “something like a dozen lifts” and replaced them with “three or four” in 1998.KimberleyBack in the time before social media, Kimberley, British Columbia ran four frontside chairlifts: a high-speed quad, a triple, a double, and a T-bar:Beginning in 2001, the ski area slowly removed everything except the quad. Which was fine until an arsonist set fire to Kimberley's North Star Express in 2021, meaning skiers had no lift-served option to the backside terrain:I discussed this whole strange sequence of events with Andy Cohen, longtime GM of sister resort Fernie, on the podcast last year:On Revelstoke's original masterplanIt is astonishing that Revelstoke serves 3,121 acres with just five lifts: a gondola, two high-speed quads, a fixed quad, and a carpet. Most Midwest ski areas spin three times more lifts for three percent of the terrain.On Priest Creek and Sundown at SteamboatSteamboat, like many ski areas, once ran two parallel fixed-grip lifts on substantively the same line, with the Priest Creek double and the Sundown triple. The Sundown Express quad arrived in 1992, but Steamboat left Priest Creek standing for occasional overflow until 2021. Here's Steamboat circa 1990:Priest Creek is gone, but that entire 1990 lift footprint is nearly unrecognizable. Huge as Steamboat is, every arriving skier squeezes in through a single portal. One of Alterra's first priorities was to completely re-imagine the base area: sliding the existing gondola looker's right; installing an additional 10-person, two-stage gondola right beside it; and moving the carpets and learning center to mid-mountain:On upgrades at A-BasinWe discuss several upgrades at A-Basin, including Lenawee, Beavers, and Pallavicini. Here's the trailmap for context:On moguls on Kachina Peak at TaosYeah I'd say this lift draws some traffic:On the T-bar at Waterville ValleyWaterville Valley opened in 1966. Fifty-two years later, mountain officials finally acknowledged that chairlifts do not work on the mountain's top 400 vertical feet. All it took was a forced 1,585-foot shortening of the resort's base-to-summit high-speed quad just eight years after its 1988 installation and the legacy double chair's continued challenges in wind to say, “yeah maybe we'll just spend 90 percent less to install a lift that's actually appropriate for this terrain.” That was the High Country T-bar, which arrived in 2018. It is insane to look at ‘90s maps of Waterville pre- and post-chop job:On Hyland Hills, MinnesotaWhat an insanely amazing place this is:On Sunrise ParkFrom 1983 to 2017, Sunrise Park, Arizona was home to the most amazing triple chair, a 7,982-foot-long Yan with 352 carriers. Cyclone, as it was known, fell apart at some point and the resort neglected to fix or replace it. A couple of years ago, they re-opened the terrain to lift-served skiing with a low-cost alternative: stringing a ropetow from a green run off the Geronimo lift to where Cyclone used to land.On Woodward Park City and BorealPowdr has really differentiated itself with its Woodward terrain parks, which exist at amazing scale at Copper and Bachelor. The company has essentially turned two of its smaller ski areas – Boreal and Woodward Park City – entirely over to terrain parks.On Killington's tunnelsYou have to zoom in, but you can see them on the looker's right side of the trailmap: Bunny Buster at Great Northern, Great Bear at Great Northern, and Chute at Great Northern.On Jackson Hole traversesJackson is steep. Engineers hacked it so kids like mine could ride there:On expansions at Beaver Creek, Keystone, AspenRecent Colorado expansions have tended to create vast zones tailored to certain levels of skiers:Beaver Creek's McCoy Park is an incredible top-of-the-mountain green zone:Keystone's Bergman Bowl planted a high-speed six-pack to serve 550 acres of high-altitude intermediate terrain:And Aspen – already one of the most challenging mountains in the country – added Hero's – a fierce black-diamond zone off the summit:On Wilbere at SnowbirdWilbere is an example of a chairlift that kept the same name, even as Snowbird upgraded it from a double to a quad and significantly moved the load station and line:On ski terrain growth in AmericaYes, a bunch of ski areas have disappeared since the 1980s, but the raw amount of ski terrain has been increasing steadily over the decades:On White Pine, WyomingCushing referred to White Pine as a “dinky little ski area” with lots of potential. Here's a look at the thousand-footer, which billionaire Joe Ricketts purchased last year:On Deer Valley's expansionYeah, Deer Valley is blowing up:On Schweitzer's growthSchweitzer's transformation has been dramatic: in 1988, the Idaho panhandle resort occupied a large footprint that was served mostly by double chairs:Today: a modern ski area, with four detach quads, a sixer, and two newer triples – only one old chairlift remains:On BC transformationsA number of British Columbia ski areas have transformed from nubbins to majors over the past 30 years:Sun Peaks, then known as Tod Mountain, in 1993Sun Peaks today:Fernie in 1996, pre-upward expansion:Fernie today:Revelstoke, then known as Mount Mackenzie, in 1996:Modern Revy:Kicking Horse, then known as “Whitetooth” in 1994:Kicking Horse today:On Tamarack's expansion potentialTamarack sits mostly on Idaho state land, and would like to expand onto adjacent U.S. Forest Service land. Resort President Scott Turlington discussed these plans in depth with me on the pod a few years back:The mountain's plans have changed since, with a smaller lift footprint:On Central Park as a manmade placeNew York City's fabulous Central Park is another chunk of earth that may strike a visitor as natural, but is in fact a manmade work of art crafted from the wilderness. Per the Central Park Conservancy, which, via a public-private partnership with the city, provides the majority of funds, labor, and logistical support to maintain the sprawling complex:A popular misconception about Central Park is that its 843 acres are the last remaining natural land in Manhattan. While it is a green sanctuary inside a dense, hectic metropolis, this urban park is entirely human-made. It may look like it's naturally occurring, but the flora, landforms, water, and other features of Central Park have not always existed.Every acre of the Park was meticulously designed and built as part of a larger composition—one that its designers conceived as a "single work of art." Together, they created the Park through the practice that would come to be known as "landscape architecture."The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

In this episode, we explore the fascinating world of mushroom farming with Mrs. Sinda Simpson and Ms. Alexandria Simpson, the dynamic duo behind The Mushroomery at White Pine Meadows in Oro-Medonte, Ontario. Together, they are dedicated to growing specialty mushrooms and bringing high-quality, sustainably grown varieties to the local market.Sinda and Alexandria share their journey of starting and growing The Mushroomery, their passion for learning, and the challenges and rewards of cultivating unique mushroom varieties. From their commitment to organic and sustainable practices to their innovative farming techniques, they discuss how they've carved out a niche in the world of specialty mushrooms. They also introduce their new line of freeze-dried mushroom products, highlighting their bold flavours, versatility, and extended shelf life for kitchens everywhere. Tune in to discover the art and science of mushroom cultivation, the culinary and health benefits of mushrooms, their versatility in cooking, and how their family farm is shaping the future of local food production.Join me for this podcast. Take a break. Listen in.A xx

Options and Community Caring at White Pine Funeral Services

A white pine in northern Wisconsin stood for more than 150 years before it met ultimate fate. Writer Ron Weber of Weyerhaeuser reflects on the tree’s resiliency and how its legacy is being preserved for years to come.

Step into the Heart of the Forest and discover the Spirit and Medicine of the Northeast Woodlands.Join Kate Gilday on a journey through the Northeast woodlands, where Nature encourages us to slow down, observe, and form a deeper connection with the world around us. Kate will share her wisdom and stories, inspiring you to use your senses to experience the unique essence of the forest.Discover the medicinal and energetic gifts of trees like White Pine, Scots Pine, Golden Birch, and Black Birch, as well as the remarkable qualities of at-risk plants such as Goldenseal, Black Cohosh, and Bloodroot. Learn practical methods for sustainably growing and protecting these precious forest medicines.Whether you're an herbalist, Nature enthusiast, or someone seeking to strengthen your bond with the wild, this webinar will illuminate the beauty and healing power of the natural world.To see the slides that Kate is referring to, check out her full recording here.Click here for Kate's Printable Forest Resource ListSupport the show

The complete collapse of California agriculture is hard for Hank to take seeing as his grandfather helped build the irrigation infrastructure. Once again can you say "Belly button banging the backbone?"

How does a County like White Pine in Nevada fund all services and education when 97% of the County is owned by the Federal Government?

Need for a Polity; Authority; Christ's appointing a kingdom; Possessions of Christ; Paying tribute; Caesar - president of Rome; Maryland; Setting men free; Rome in America; Sanctuary?; Aristobulus and Hyrcanus; "Law of the Place"; White Pine treaty; Rome and the Gauls; Socialism; Being of the "world"; United States jurisdiction; Pilate's wife; Right of self-determination; Red Sea crossing; Living in the spirit; Spiritual jurisdiction; Tree of Life; Forgiveness; "Polity"; Family = creation of God; Strange fire; Free assemblies; Jesus the king; Turning the world upside-down; Setting the captive free; Charity; Church CEOs?; Right to choose; Policy enforcement; Guidelines; Loving our neighbor; Foreign aid; Romans 13; Pilate - procurator of Rome; Paul's execution?; Britannia?; Paul's family lineage; Police; Article 5 - Servants of the Kingdom and mankind; "Constituency"; "Christening"; Public baptism; Witnessing; Deut 14:29; Blessings; Ministers; Lk 10:27; Ministerial jurisdiction; 2 Thess 2:13; 1 Thess 4:9; Owning thing common; Belonging to God; Salvation; Q: Darren - Self-determination; E.O. 13083 (1998); Citizenship; Coverage for Levites; Reliance on Holy Spirit; Don't test God.

Krueger's Christmas Tree Farm has been more than just a place to pick your own perfect tree—it's been at the heart of holiday traditions for families in the Lake Elmo and Twin Cities Minnesota area for 70 years and counting.    Spanning four generations, the Krueger family has cultivated not just evergreens but cherished memories, as they continue to welcome visitors with the warmth and magic of the Christmas season. From the fresh scent of pine, the warmth of a crackling fire and hot cider, to the timeless ritual of cutting the perfect tree and pulling it on a sled through the snow, Krueger's has become a beloved part of holiday celebrations. So get cozy, as Neil, Deb and John Krueger takes us from the accidental start to selling Christmas trees in 1954, to the traditions, Tootsie Rolls, and the stories behind this family-run farm that's been keeping the spirit of Christmas alive and families returning for seven decades. In this episode, Neil talks about the varieties of trees and which ones are most popular for their needles and which ones people like best for that fresh pine scent. And they share tips for how to keep your evergreen looking its best all Christmas season with water and spritzing. Who knew the sap would seal the bottom and not absorb water anymore if we let the water run out? For the 2024 season, Krueger's has Fir—Balsam, Canaan,  Fraser, Korean and Siberian—and White Pine and Norway Pine trees. Plus, you'll find gorgeous, handmade wreaths, swags, spruce tops, garland, roping and tree stands. Reservations (⁠on their website⁠) are required for pre-cut and cut-your-own. Krueger's is a full-service experience. If you want to cut your own tree, they'll provide you with a saw and a sled to move it. Make holiday memories sipping free hot cider and getting cozy around the blazing bonfire. Before you head home, Krueger's staff will shake the tree to remove dust, old needles, grass, etc., wrap it with a tree baler and secure it to your car. You'll also receive a gift—Krueger's custom annualized tree ornament. To reserve your tree time slot, see photos, and learn more about experiencing the farm, browse their website https://kruegerschristmastrees.com. Krueger's Christmas Tree Farm ENTRANCE & EXIT:10920 43rd Street NorthLake Elmo, MN 55042 651-350-4545 https://kruegerschristmastrees.com Instagram: @kruegerschristmastreefarm Facebook: Kruegers Christmas Tree Farm ⁠Frequently Asked Questions ⁠ Staci Mergenthal, Host and Producer RandomSweets.com #ourSweetMidwestLife Website randomsweets.com Instagram @potatoesandmittens Facebook Funeral Potatoes & Wool Mittens Instagram @randomsweets Facebook Random Sweets Pinterest @staciperry Email: staci@randomsweets.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/potatoesandmittens/support

Versluys v. White Pine Circle LLC

Pre-Planning with White Pine Funeral Services

This week we dive into the upcoming White Pine 50 instead of Leadville 100 because for some reason Leadville is secretive about who runs their race (weird, right?).

The Great Fire of 1910 greatly changed the (literal) landscape of northern Idaho, as well as the continent's population of western white pine (Pinus monitcola). What followed was one of the most successful and dangerous marketing campaigns in US history.Completely Arbortrary is produced and hosted by Casey Clapp and Alex CrowsonSupport the pod and become a Treemium MemberFollow along on InstagramFind Arbortrary merch on our storeFind additional reading on our websiteCover art by Jillian BartholdMusic by Aves and The Mini-VandalsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There's something special about being able to pick and eat your own farm-grown fruit. That's exactly the experience you'll get if you head east of Hudson just a bit to visit White Pine Berry Farm, where Greg and Andrew Zwald (known to regulars as Farmer Greg and Farmer Andrew) have continued to grow their U-pick operation since opening in 2012.On this week's episode of St. Croix Stories, we're heading to the farm to sample some fruits and learn all about the history of White Pine Berry Farm — which was started by Greg after he wrapped up a 40-year run as a dairy farmer. These days, Greg and Andrew work together as a father-son duo to run White Pine Berry Farm, offering plenty for families to enjoy when they come visit. Send a message to the hostFollow St. Croix Stories on Facebook and Instagram, and hear all episodes at stcroixstories.com.

Justin was born in  Oxford, Ohio. He went to college for Homeland Security and Terrorism and participated in the National Guard for 6 years. Out of college he worked cyber security and IT but wasn't feeling fulfilled and missed the outdoors. He had a neighbor with a White Pine that he needed taken down so Justin started learning about tree removals via YouTube. He continued working full time in cyber security while doing side tree work. He finally decided to get a truck and dump trailer and leave his full time job for the world of tree work.

Thanks for being part of the conversation I am the Poet In The Forest. A children series I penned out in the 1990s. None of it would be possible if it wasn't for this forest in South Charlotte, NC. I talk about it so much that I thought maybe it's time you get to meet all that inspires me. Thanks for being part of the conversationBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-unplugged-totally-uncut--994165/support.

This episode of the Ducks Unlimited podcast features Mike Valley, a decoy carver, hunter, and commercial fisherman. Host Katie Burke delves into Mike's family history of carving, with his grandfather carving decoys during the Depression and his father continuing the tradition in the 50s until his recent passing. Mike shares insights into the rich carving history in Prairie du Chien and the influence of prominent carvers in the area. Tune in to hear about the deep-rooted carving legacy that shaped Mike's upbringing and passion for the craft.www.ducks.org/DUPodcast

Brookfield White Pine Hydro LLC v. FERC

When did it become a Crime Against Nature to harvest a tree? Today we hit the whole concept of management of the resource and ask the question why don't we?

One of the largest conifers you'll see this winter --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/followfox/support

What makes White Pine Funerals unique compared to other mortuary services. 

If you've been following me for a while, you've probably heard me say that herbalism is about so much more than, “Take this herb for that problem.” To me, reciprocal connection with the web of life is at the heart of herbalism and this episode with Laura Gilmour illustrates that beautifully.You'll hear stories about white pine, as well as the beautiful ways Laura has developed a relationship with this tree over time. As Laura points out, she isn't a clinical herbalist and this episode isn't about giving you lists of ways that white pine can be prescribed as medicine. What it will give you is inspiration for how you can deepen your relationship with the plants that give so generously to us. I also really like Laura's parting thoughts about finding your way as an herbalist and her wisdom about failure, so don't miss those.By the end of this episode, you'll know:► The easiest way Laura's found to harvest super-nutritious pine pollen► The culinary principle that guided Laura in the creation of her best-selling spice mix► The cultural and historical significance of white pine► How to find your own niche in herbalism► Why embracing failure is so important to your growth as an herbalist► and so much more…For those of you who don't already know her, Laura Gilmour is a forager, herbalist, and business owner living near Dwight, Ontario, Canada. Laura has a passion for herbalism, naturalist studies, homesteading, and ancestral living skills that connect us to our food and the land in the most human of ways. Laura runs Wild Muskoka Botanicals, which produces artisan wild foods and cocktail products. It exists to reconnect people with the natural world and to promote wellness and fun by incorporating wild plants back into people's modern lives. She also teaches foraging and herbal medicine classes in the Muskoka area from an animist and relationship-based perspective.If you'd like to hear more from Laura, which I highly recommend, then head to the show notes where you can get easy links for her website and social media channels. You can also find the transcript for this episode in the show notes.I'm so happy to share our conversation with you today!----Get full show notes and more information at: herbswithrosaleepodcast.comFor more behind-the-scenes of this podcast, follow @rosaleedelaforet on Instagram!The secret to using herbs successfully begins with knowing who YOU are. Get started by taking my free Herbal Jumpstart course when you sign up for my newsletter.If you enjoy the Herbs with Rosalee podcast, we could use your support! Please consider leaving a 5-star rating and review and sharing the show with someone who needs to hear it!On the podcast, we explore the many ways plants heal, as food, as medicine, and through nature connection. Each week, I focus on a single seasonal plant and share trusted herbal knowledge so that you can get the best results when using herbs for your health.Learn more about Herbs with Rosalee at herbswithrosalee.com.----Rosalee is an herbalist and author of the bestselling book Alchemy of Herbs: Transform Everyday Ingredients Into Foods & Remedies That Heal and co-author of the bestselling book

In this episode we go deep with herbalist, author and green witch Robin Rose Bennett on grief, meaning, the power of the story, Rose, Artemesia, White Pine, Cedar, and much more! Robin Rose Bennett is a story-teller, writer, herbalist and green witch. She shares Earth wisdom with gratitude for the magic and mystery of the web of life. She is the author of A Green Witch's Pocket Book of Wisdom - Big Little Life Tips, Healing Magic- A Green Witch Guidebook to Conscious Living and The Gift of Healing Herbs - Plant Medicines and Home Remedies for a Vibrantly Healthy Life, and the forthcoming A Young Green Witch's Guide to Plant Magic - Rituals and Recipes from Nature. #herbalism #podcast #herbal #herbalife #herbalmedicine #greenwitch #wtich #magick #plantcunningpodcast #spiritualpodcast --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/plantcunning/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/plantcunning/support

The energy boondoggle we are being put in is very telling for our future, are your lights coming on yet?

The blatant attack on the local control granted by the U.S. Constitution is full steam ahead.

In Today's Episode: Truck Driver Ran Over A Truck Driver In Pilot Pk Lot Officers responded to the scene around 6:30 p.m. on Friday, January 12, at a Pilot Travel Center in White Pine, Tennessee, according to the White Pine Police Department (WPPD).                                                                    When police arrived, they found Alabama-based truck driver Gary M. Clark, 64, deceased in the Pilot parking lot.

It was an ordinary late afternoon in the early 1980s, when something incredible happened to a rural family in Eastern Canada. As they looked out the windows of their home, they observed a massive, triangle-shaped object hovering motionless in the sky, in a sighting that would forever change their lives.  This week on The Micah Hanks Program, we interview a witness to these events, whose incredible recollections offer a unique perspective on the ongoing eerie appearances of large, triangular UAP over the decades.  The story doesn't end here... become an X Subscriber and get access to even more weekly content and monthly specials. Want to advertise/sponsor The Micah Hanks Program? We have partnered with the fine folks at Gumball to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. If you would like to advertise with The Micah Hanks Program, all you have to do is click the link below to get started: Gumball: Advertise with The Micah Hanks Program Show Notes Below are links to stories and other content featured in this episode: NEWS: OSIRIS-REx Mission Achieves Historic Milestone with Successful Delivery of Asteroid Samples to Earth NASA's OSIRIS-REx lands samples of asteroid Bennu to Earth after historic 4-billion-mile journey NASA's Mars Sample Return mission may never fly  US exploring potential space force hotline with China  Scientists Estimate When Humans Could Become Extinct ChatGPT can now hear, see and speak as OpenAI gives the chatbot its most humanlike update  BECOME AN X SUBSCRIBER AND GET EVEN MORE GREAT PODCASTS AND MONTHLY SPECIALS FROM MICAH HANKS. Sign up today and get access to the entire back catalog of The Micah Hanks Program, as well as “classic” episodes of The Gralien Report Podcast, weekly “additional editions” of the subscriber-only X Podcast, the monthly Enigmas specials, and much more. Like us on Facebook Follow @MicahHanks on Twitter Keep up with Micah and his work at micahhanks.com.

Welcome to this episode of Community Matters podcast, where we discuss issues important to managing and governing condos, cooperatives and homeowner associations. Have you ever cut your grass in March? Are you ready for the potential decline and disappearance of the White Pine and other popular tree species and the impact on  your community's tree canopy? Our climate is changing and the impacts on trees and landscapes is underway. We'll chat about these topics and more with Rick Close, Senior Consulting Arborist with The Davey Tree Expert Company in this issue of Community Matters Podcast. Special thanks to our sponsor - Hoffman Law, LLC. Visit Hoffman Law online for more information.  Community Matters is available in the iTunes store, on Google Play and on Spotify. Subscribe there or download the podbean app and be the first to receive notifications when new episodes are posted.

(Sep 1, 2023) The Elder Grove near Paul Smiths is a stand of eastern white pines that are hundreds of years old. We take a trip to experience the awe and the biology of how they've survived so long. Also: Two Watertown residents who helped steal former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's laptop during the January 6th Capitol riot face possible prison time.

(Aug 25, 2023) Earlier this summer, the largest known eastern white pine was recorded in the southern Adirondacks. The tree, nicknamed “Bigfoot”, is about as tall as the Statue of Liberty. The story of the tree hunter who found it. Also: New York's first "Cannabis showcase" is running just down the road from the New York State Fair.

Ep30 Features life updates, the 54th running of Pine Lake, Jase White, and the guys realize they are beginning to "age out."  NE-EDT racing from the Ashtabula, Ohio featuring the all new adult 90 classes! MWEDT Sophmore Pro and recent winner of ProAM Unlimited at NE-EDT joins the RitR boys to discuss his sudden ascension in the EDT world.  Did you see the Women's class...this may be the best class in the history of ATV racing.  Finally Ryne keeps educating the boys on the hip lingo of the new gen! Remember the https://www.88livetoride.com/ auction at LLs on August 11th. RJR https://110nutrition.com/ (code remain)

Song tales about the West - my West. Diamond Mountain to old Nebrasky...oh, and some of the unknown places.

Once banned in American for posing a threat to the White Pine tree, learn about an awesome bush that provides grape-like berries for many years.

A week after hosting Professor John Pastor discussing his book "White Pine" Dan and Joe spend time discussing the experience they had learning about this iconic American tree.     To purchase "White Pine...The Natural and Human History of a Foundational American Tree" visit the publisher's website. Use promo code PINE for 20% off.  https://islandpress.org/books/white-pine   To learn more about Professor John Pastor  https://islandpress.org/author/john-pastor

Dan and Joe sit down with Professor John Pastor to discuss his new book, White Pine-- The Natural and Human History of a Foundational American Tree.   Sit back and listen to an AMAZING story about a tree that helped plant the seeds of Revolution and built this nation to what it is today.     To purchase "White Pine" please visit Island Press! https://islandpress.org/books/white-pine   John Pastor is an ecologist and professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, where his teaching and research focus on the natural history and ecology of northern ecosystems. Pastor is the author of Mathematical Ecology of Populations and Ecosystems, is co-editor of Large Mammalian Herbivores, Ecosystem Dynamics, and Conservation, and has authored or coauthored 22 book chapters and over 120 papers, mostly about the North Woods. He is co-chair of the Natural History Section of the Ecological Society of America.   Professor Pastor's personal blog http://www.theclevermoose.com/

For our Wednesday Wellness focus, we learned about the White PIne Center for Healing, the only Erie-area clinic for those dealing with eating disorders, body image issues, weight stigma, and trauma. Joining us was Mary Machuga, Founder & Executive Director; and Brandy Montgomery, Clinical Director.

Throwback Thursday with Kyle Horvath of Ely, NV / White Pine County #TBT This episode first aired on June 26th, 2021 - as Episode #31 Topics Covered in this show: Kyle Horvath Back Story Kyle's start in Tourism in Carson City, NV Kyle's Transition from Carson City, NV to White Pine Co / Ely, NV Ely and the IMBA Trail Accelerator Grant Future Trail Expansion plans for the region Local Trail Club Great Basin Trails Alliance What to expect for a trail experience in the region Fears Tears and Beers – The first Enduro Race ever started in Ely Other Events in Ely Community Support of Trails and Mountain Biking in Ely About Ely / White Pine Co as a Community (outside of Mountain Biking) Other aspects of Outdoor Recreation in the region Highway 50 – the Loneliest Highway in America (Most Mountain Biking Highway in America?) Trail Names… Nevada Northern Railway BETA MTB Magazine and the birth of a new mountain bike publication Closing Comments Links: Visit White Pine County: http://elynevada.net/ Ely NV Mountain Biking: https://elynevada.net/project/mountainbiking/ Within Range Freehub Magazine: https://freehubmag.com/features/within-range BETA MTB YouTube Video on Ely / White Pine Co: https://youtu.be/5i7oZsuI-wk Trailforks Mapping for Ely: https://www.trailforks.com/region/ely/ Great Basin Trails Alliance: https://www.facebook.com/GreatBasinTrailsAlliance/ Loneliest Road in America: https://loneliestroad.us/loneliest-road/ Nevada Northern Railway: https://nnry.com/    Episode Sponsor - Coulee Creative: www.dudejustsendit.com https://www.couleecreative.com/   Trail EAffect Show Links: Trail Effect Podcast Website: www.traileaffectpodcast.com KETL Mtn Apparel Affiliate Link: https://ketlmtn.com/josh Worldwide Cyclery Affiliate Link: https://www.worldwidecyclery.com/?aff=559 Trail One Components: https://trailone.bike/ Contact Josh at evolutiontrails@gmail.com Support Trail EAffect through donations at: https://www.patreon.com/traileaffect You can also reach out and donate via PayPal or other means if you feel so inclined to do so. This Podcast has been edited and produced by Evolution Trail Services  

Logging has seen a stark evolution since its origins. What started as a wildly dangerous and often deadly process done largely by hand is now a multibillion dollar industry fascilitated by manmade machines. Herein we meet our character, the Eastern white pine (Pinus strobus) a ghost from the early days of American logging. In the first of a short series on logging, we hear the tragic tale of this scorned quintisential pine species and the lumber barons who ensured its demise.Completely Arbortrary is produced and hosted by Casey Clapp and Alex CrowsonJoin the Cone of the Month ClubSupport the show on PatreonFollow along on InstagramFind Arbortrary merch on our storeFind additional reading on our websiteCover art by Jillian BartholdMusic by Aves and The Mini-Vandals

Find the full text of this episode on MissingWitches.com.Works Cited:https://www.ababord.org/L-histoire-de-l-occupation-Anishnabe-dans-les-Laurentideshttps://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nerc130k.htmlhttps://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/labcoat-life/common_ancestry_we_come_from/#:~:text=All%20animals%20(including%20humans)%2C,stem%20from%20a%20single%20root.https://www.science.org/content/article/ancestor-all-placental-mammals-revealedhttps://annforsci.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s13595-012-0201-8#:~:text=Pinus%20originated%20~150%20Ma%20in,by%20the%20newly%20emerging%20angiosperms.https://forestierenchef.gouv.qc.ca/wp-content/uploads/135-143_MDPF_Pins.pdfhttps://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/vintage-red-and-white-pines-worth-finding-in-northeastern-ontario-1.3137727https://www.sudbury.com/lifestyle/resident-works-with-sudburys-white-pine-history-225237https://www.sudbury.com/local-news/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-ontarios-majestic-white-pine-2512791https://thenarwhal.ca/opinion-sudbury-ontario-extractive-industries-transition/https://www.science.org/content/article/plants-communicate-distress-using-their-own-kind-nervous-systemhttps://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120620133357.htmhttps://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/movementtowardsreconciliation/chapter/the-greater-sudbury-area-atikamesksheng-anishnawbek/https://iupress.org/9780253215192/native-pragmatism/https://americanindian.si.edu/sites/1/files/pdf/education/HaudenosauneeGuide.pdfhttps://www.nelma.org/the-eastern-white-pine-tree-will-likely-migrate-west-with-climate-change/https://www.jcrt.org/archives/04.3/lokensgard.pdfhttps://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496202178/ Photo by Ryan Hodnett CC-A-SA

The winter just keeps coming in the Western part of the United States. The skiers are not happy either there is too much snow or not enough and they want emissions to be the problem.

Robin Rose teaches us about white pine and why it's the tree of peace. This is a clip from a class Robin Rose Bennett taught for the International Herb Symposium. WATCH THE FULL CLASS  Learn more about Robin and her work at RobinRoseBennett.com BOOK - The Gift of Healing Herbs by Robin Rose Bennett: LEARN MORE AND BUY International Herb Symposium - LEARN MORE AND REGISTER WANT MORE HERBAL GOODNESS? Sign up for the HerbRally newsletter and receive these THIRTEEN herbal freebies!  CLAIM YOUR FREEBIES!  Here's the freebies: VIDEO | Most Vital Herb in David Hoffmann's First-Aid Kit WEBINAR | Herbal First Aid with Heather Irvine EBOOK | 86 Page Plant Healer Book 30 DAYS FREE | HerbRally Schoolhouse EBOOK | Calendula for Radiant Skin by Rosalee de la Forêt VIDEO | 5 Herbal Events Around the World presented by Bevin Clare BOOK DISCOUNT | The Essential Guide to Western Botanical Medicine PRIVATE COMMUNITY | HerbRally Facebook Group BOOK EXCERPT | 36 Pages from Plant Healer's "Nourishing Foods" Book DISCOUNT | 15% off all Mountain Rose Herbs products DISCOUNT | Mushroom Revival AUDIO | Hour-long Adaptogens Class with Heather Irvine DISCOUNT | 10% off all HerbRally products CLAIM YOUR FREEBIES!  Thanks for listening!  HerbRally www.herbrally.com 

Eastern white pine is an iconic tree of cultural and historical importance to eastern North America. The “great pineries” in this corner of the world were heavily exploited during the 19th century for everything from ship masts to lumber that built growing cities. But white pine has been quietly making a recovery over the past 150 years, and with that recovery white pine silviculture has continued to evolve. Join us for a conversation with Dr. William Livingston from the University of Maine as we explore the health and management of this fascinating tree species.​​​​To earn CEU/CFE credits, learn more, or interact with SilviCast, visit the episode webpage. 

So, what is the real agenda here? To bring awareness to a senseless massacre or just another land grab? In addition, what is happening in New Zealnd and Australia governments could have an effect on U.S. lamb production in a negative manner.

In a state renowned for its forests, there is arguably no Minnesota tree more majestic than the white pine. Giant white pines, some 150 feet tall, once covered much of the northern half of Minnesota. Just a tiny fraction of old growth trees remain, but efforts to bring them back are slowly taking root. MPR News reporter Dan Kraker covered the story and joined host Cathy Wurzer to talk about the tree's past, present, and future. Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.  Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.    We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

On the last ShopNotes Podcast episode before Thanksgiving, John, Phil, and Logan are gathered around the hearth to give thanks and discuss the cornucopia of woodworking topics of the day.

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Oct. 26. It dropped for free subscribers on Oct. 29. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoLonie Glieberman, President of Mount Bohemia, MichiganRecorded onOctober 21, 2022About Mount BohemiaClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Lonie GliebermanPass affiliations: NoneReciprocal pass partners (view full list here):* 3 days each at Bogus Basin, Mission Ridge, Great Divide, Lee Canyon, Pine Creek, White Pine, Sleeping Giant, Mt. Spokane, Eaglecrest, Eagle Point* 2 days each at Porcupine Mountains; Crystal Mountain, Michigan; Giants Ridge; Hurricane Ridge* 1 day each at Brundage, Treetops, Whitecap Mountains, Ski Brule, Snowstar* Free midweek skiing March 1-2, 5-9, 12-16, and 24-25 at Caberfae when staying at slopeside MacKenzie LodgeLocated in: Mohawk, MichiganClosest neighboring ski areas: Mont Ripley (46 minutes), Porcupine Mountains (2 hours), Ski Brule (2 hours, 34 minutes), Snowriver (2 hours, 35 minutes), Keyes Peak (2 hours, 36 minutes), Marquette Mountain (2 hours, 40 minutes), Big Powderhorn (2 hours, 43 minutes), Mt. Zion (2 hours, 45 minutes), Pine Mountain (2 hours, 49 minutes), Whitecap (3 hours, 8 minutes).Base elevation: 600 feetSummit elevation: 1,500 feetVertical drop: 900 feetSkiable Acres: 585Average annual snowfall: 273 inchesTrail count: 147 (24% double-black, 49% black, 20% intermediate, 7% beginner)Lift count: 2 lifts, 4 buses (1 double, 1 triple - view Lift Blog's of inventory of Mount Bohemia's lift fleet)Bohemia has one of the most confusing trailmaps in America, so here's an overhead view by Mapsynergy. This displays the main mountain only, and does not include Little Boho, but you can clearly see where Haunted Valley sits in relation to the lifts:Here's an older version, from 2014, that does not include Little Boho or the newer Middle Earth section, but has the various zones clearly labelled:Why I interviewed himImagine: America's wild north. Hours past everything you've ever heard of. Then hours past that. A peninsula hanging off a peninsula in the middle of the largest lake on Earth. There, a bump on the topo map. Nine hundred feet straight up. The most vert in the 1,300-mile span between Bristol and Terry Peak. At the base a few buildings, a cluster of yurts, a green triple chair crawling up the incline.Here, at the end of everything, skiers find almost nothing. As though the voyage to road's end had cut backward through time. No snowguns. No groomers. No rental shop. No ski school. No Magic Carpet. No beginner runs. No beginners. A lift and a mountain, and nothing more.Nothing but raw and relentless terrain. All things tucked away at the flash-and-bling modern resort made obvious. Glades everywhere, top to bottom, labyrinthian and endless, hundreds of acres deep. Chutes. Cliffs. Bumps. Terrain technical and twisting. No ease in. No run out. All fall line.To the masses this is nightmare skiing, the sort of stacked-obstacle elevator shaft observed from the flat shelf of green-circle groomers. To the rest of us – the few of us – smiling wanly from the eighth seat of a gondola car as ya'lling tourists yuck about the black diamonds they just windshield-wipered back to Corpus Christi – arrival at Mount Bohemia is a sort of surrealist dream. It can't be real. This place. Everything grand about skiing multiplied. Everything extraneous removed. Like waking up and discovering all food except tacos and pizza had gone away. Delicious entrees for life.And the snow. The freeze-thaws, the rain, the surly guttings of New England winters barely touch Boho. The lake-effect snowtrain – two to eight inches, nearly every day from December to March – erases these wicked spells soon after their rare castings. And the snow piles up: 273 inches on average, and more than 300 inches in three of the past five seasons. In 2022, Boho skied into May for the third time in the past decade.There is no better ski area. For skiers whose lifequest is to roll as one with the mountain as the mountain was formed. Those weary of cat-tracks and Rangers coats splaying wobbly across the corduroy and bunched human bowling pins and the spectacular price of everything. Boho's season pass is $109. Ninety-nine dollars if you can do without Saturdays. It's loaded with reciprocal days at nearly two dozen partners. It's a spectacular bargain and a spectacular find. At once dramatic and understated, wide-open and closely kept, rowdy and sublime, Mount Bohemia is the ski area that skiers deserve. And it is the ski area that the Midwest – one of the world's great ski cultures – deserves. There is nothing else like Mount Bohemia in America, and there's really nothing else like it anywhere.What we talked aboutOctober snow in the UP; how much snow Boho needs to open; “we can get five feet in December in a matter of days”; why the great Sugar Loaf, Michigan ski area failed and why it's likely never coming back; a journey through the Canadian Football League; what running a football team and running a ski area have in common; “Narrow the focus, strengthen the brand”; wild rumors of a never-developed ski area in the Keweenaw Peninsula overheard on a Colorado chairlift; sleuthing pre-Google; the business case for a ski area with no beginner terrain; “it's not just the size, it's the pitch”; bringing Bohemia to improbable life; the most important element to Bohemia as a viable business; how to open a ski area when you've never worked at a ski area; community opposition materializes – “I still to this day don't know why they were mad”; winning the referendum to build the resort; how locals feel about Boho today; industry reaction to a ski area with no grooming, no snowmaking, and no beginner terrain; “you actually have created the stupidest ski resort of all time”; the long history of established companies missing revolutionary products; dead-boring 1990s Michigan skiing; the slow early days with empty lifts spinning all day long; learning from failure to push through to success; the business turning point; Bohemia's $99 season pass; the kingmaking power of the lost ski media; the state of Boho 22 years in; “nothing is ever as important as adding more and new terrain”; why Bohemia raised the price of its season pass by $10 for 2022-23; breaking down Boho's pass fees; the two-year and lifetime passes; why the one-day annual season pass sale is now a 10-day annual season pass sale; why the ski area no longer sells season passes outside of its $99 pass sales window; protecting the Saturday experience; could we see a future with no lift tickets?; the potential of a Bohemia single-day lift ticket costing more than a season pass; “reward your season ticket holders”; the mountain's massive reciprocal ticket network; the Indy Pass and why it wouldn't work for Bohemia; the return of Fast Pass lanes; “we have to be very careful that Bohemia is a place for all people that are advanced or expert skiers”; why Bohemia's frontside triple functions as a double; what could replace the triple and when it could happen; considering the carpet-load; what sort of lift we could see in Haunted Valley; whether we could ever see a lift in Outer Limits; a possible second frontside lift; where a lift would go on Little Boho and how it could connect to and from the parking lot; why surface lifts probably wouldn't work at Bohemia; what sort of lift could replace the double; whether the current lifts could be repurposed elsewhere on the mountain; what Bohemia could look like at full terrain build-out; the potential of Voodoo Mountain and what it would take to see a lift over there; whether Voodoo could become a Bluebird Backcountry-style uphill-only ski area; why it will likely remain a Cat-skiing hill for the foreseeable future; sizing up the terrain between Bohemia and Voodoo; where to find the new glades coming to Bohemia this season; the art of glading; breaking down the triple-black-diamond Extreme Backcountry; why serious injuries have been rare in Bohemia's rowdiest terrain; the extreme power of the Lake Superior snowbelt; Bohemia's magical snow patterns; why the Bohemia business model couldn't work in most places; whether Bohemia could ever install limited snowmaking and why it may never need it; how a mountain in Michigan without snowmaking can consistently push the season into May; “Bohemia is a community first and a ski area second”; why Bohemia is more like a 1960s European ski resort than anything in North America; and Bohemia's stint running the Porcupine Mountains ski area and why it ultimately pulled out of the arrangement.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewIt may be the most-repeated trope on The Storm Skiing Podcast: “skiing is a capital-intensive business.” It's true. Scope the battle corps of snow cannons lined hundreds deep along resort greens and blues, the miles of subsurface piping that feed them, the pump houses, the acres-big manmade ponds that anchor the whole system. The frantic rental centers with gear racked high and deep like a snowy Costco. The battalions of Snowcats, each costing more than a house. The snowmobiles. The cavernous day lodges. The shacks and Centers and chalets. And the chairlifts. How much does a chairlift cost? The price seems to increase daily. Operators generally guard these numbers, but Windham told me in March that their new 389-vertical-foot D-line detachable quad will cost $5 million. Again: more than a house. More than a neighborhood. And that's before you turn the thing on.But what if you get rid of the, um, capital? What if you build a ski resort like Old Man MacGregor did in 19-aught-7? Find a snowy hill and point to it and say, “there's my ski area, Sonny, go do yourself some ski'in. Just gimme a nickel and get the hell out of my face so's I can kill me a chicken for supper.”OK, so Boho stood up a pair of modern (used) chairlifts instead of MacGregor's ropetow slung through a Model-T engine, but its essential concept echoes that brash and freewheeling bygone America: A lift and a mountain. Go skiing.This isn't supposed to be good enough. You need Magic Carpets and vast lineups of matching-jacket ski instructors and “impeccably groomed” trails. A place where Grandpa Earl and Earl Jr. and Earl Jr. Jr. can bond over the amazing logistical hassles of family skiing and enjoy $150 cups of chili together in the baselodge.But over the past two decades, the minimalist ski area has emerged as one of skiing's best ideas. It can't work everywhere, of course, and it can't work for everyone. This is a complement to, and not a replacement for, the full-service ski resort. If you've never skied and you show up at Bohemia to go skiing, you're either going to end up disappointed or hospitalized, and perhaps both. This is a ski area for skiers, for the ones who spend all day at Boyne peaking off the groomers into the trees, looking for lines.There is a market for this. Look west, to Silverton, Colorado, where an antique Yan double – Mammoth's old Chair 15 – rises 1,900 vertical feet and drops skiers onto a 26,000-acre mecca of endless untracked pow. Or Bluebird Backcountry, also in Colorado, which has no chairlifts but marked runs rising off a minimalist base area, a launch point for Uphill Bro's bearded adventures. Neither pull the sorts of Holy Calamity mobs that increasingly define I-70 skiing, but both appear to be sustainable niche businesses.Of the three, Bohemia appeals the most to the traditional resort skier. Silverton is big and exposed and scary, a beacon-and-shovel-required-at-all-times kind of place. Bluebird is a zone in which to revel and to ponder, as much a shuffling hike as it is a day on skis. Boho skis a lot like the vast off-piste zones of Alta and Snowbird, with their infinite choose-your-own-adventure lines, entire acres-wide faces and twisting forests all ungroomed. Both offer a resort experience: high-speed lifts, (a few) groomed boulevards, snowguns blasting near the base. But that's not the point of Little Cottonwood Canyon. I skied Chip's Run once. It sucks. I can't imagine the person who shows up at Snowbird and laps this packed boulevard of milquetoast skiing. This is where you go for raw, unhinged skiing on bountiful and ever-refilling natural snow. For decades this was Utah-special, or Western-special, the sort of experience that was impossible to find in the Midwest. Then came Bohemia, with a different story to tell, a version of the Out West wild-nasty in the least likely place imaginable.What I got wrongIn discussing a possible skin/ski between Mount Bohemia and Voodoo Mountain – where Boho runs a small Cat-skiing operation – I compared the four-mile trek between them to the oft-skied route between Bolton Valley and Stowe, which sit five miles apart in the Vermont wilderness. The drive, I noted, was “about an hour.” In optimal conditions, it's actually right around 40 minutes. With wintertime traffic and weather, it can be double that or longer.I also accidentally said that the new name for the ski area formerly known as Big Snow, Michigan was “Snowbasin.” Which was kinda dumb of me. But then like 30 seconds later I said the actual name, “Snowriver,” so you're just gonna have to let that one go.Why you should ski Mount BohemiaMidwest skiing in the ‘90s was defined largely by what it wasn't. And what it wasn't was interesting in any way. I use this word a lot: “interesting” terrain. What I mean by that is anything other than wide-open groomed runs. And in mid-90s Michigan, that's all there was. Bumps were rare. Glades, nonexistent. Powder unceremoniously chewed up in the groom. The nascent terrain parks were branded as “snowboard parks,” no skiers allowed. A few ski areas actively ignored skiers poaching these early ramps and halfpipes – Nub's Nob was especially generous. But many more chased us away, leaving us to hunt the trail's edge in search of the tiniest knolls and drop-offs to carry us airborne.It didn't have to be this way. As often as I could, I would wake up at 4 and drive north across the border into Ontario. There lay Searchmont, a natural terrain park, a whole side of the mountain ungroomed and wild, dips and drops and mandatory 10-foot airs midtrial. Why had no one in Michigan hacked off even a portion of their Groomeramas for this sort of freeride skiing?In those years I visited friends at Michigan Tech, forty-five minutes south of where Bohemia now stands, each January. Snow always hip-high along the sidewalks, more falling every day. One afternoon we drove north out of Houghton, along US 41, into the hills rising along the Keweenaw Peninsula. Somewhere in the wilderness, we stopped. Climbed. Unimaginable quantities of snow devouring us like quicksand at every step. In descent, leaping off cliffs and rocks, sliding down small, steep chutes.We did not bring skis that day. But the terrain, I thought, would have been wildly appropriate for a certain sort of unhinged ski experience. Like a super-Searchmont. Wilder and bigger and rowdier. We could call it “The Realm of Stu's Extreme Ski Resort,” I joked with my friend on the long drive home.But I didn't think anyone would actually do it. The ski areas of Michigan seemed impossibly devoted to the lifeless version of skiing that catered to the intermediate masses. When Boho opened in 2000, I couldn't believe it was real. I still barely do. Live through a generation or two, and you begin to appreciate impermanence, and how names carry through time but what they mean evolves. The Michigan ski areas that once offered one and only one specific type of skiing have, as I noted in my podcast conversation with Nub's Nob General Manager Ben Doornbos a couple weeks ago, gotten much more adept at creating what I call a balanced mountain. Boyne, The Highlands, Caberfae – all deliver a far more satisfying product than they did 25 years ago.Boho drove at least some of this change. Suddenly, an expert skier had real options in the Midwest. Not that they new it at first – Glieberman recalls the dead, dark days of the ski area's first few seasons. But that's over. Bohemia is, on certain days, maxed out, in desperate need of more lifts and a touch fewer skiers – the famous $99 pass will increase to $109 this season for anyone who wants to ski Saturdays. The place works, as a concept, as a culture, as a magnet for expert skiers.Most ski areas, if you look closely enough, exist to serve some nearby population center. There are only a few that are good enough that they thrive in spite of their location, that skiers will drive past a dozen other ski areas to hit. Telluride. Taos. Jay Peak. Sugarloaf. Add Bohemia to this category. And add it to your list. No matter where you ski, this one is worth the pilgrimage.Podcast Notes* Glieberman references the book 22 Immutable Laws of Branding  - specifically its calls to “narrow your focus, strengthen your brand.” Here's the Amazon listing.* We don't get into this extensively, but Lonie mentions Mount Bohemia TV. This is an amazing series of shorts exploring Boho life and culture. Here's a sampling, but you can watch them all here.More Bohemia* A Vermonter visits Boho* A Ski magazine visit to Porcupine Mountains – a state-owned ski area – when Glieberman ran it in the mid-2000s.* A Powder Q&A with Glieberman.* I'm not the only one who's amazed with this place. Paddy O'Connell, writing in Powder seven years ago:Midwestern powder skiing is alive and real. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is the home of the greatest grassroots ski resort in North America, Mount Bohemia. Storms swell over Lake Superior and slam their leeward winds on to the UP all winter long. Endless exploration is waiting up north through the treed ruggedness of Haunted Valley and the triple black Extreme Backcountry. The resort prides itself on being almost 100 percent unmarked and nearly devoid of ropes. The terrain is fun and adventurous and the bounty of snow is remarkable. Keweenaw County uses a 30-foot snow stake to measure season totals, and is currently measuring just under 25 feet. While my friends out West have been mountain biking and crack climbing, I have been slashing creek beds and frozen waterfalls, chomping on frosty Midwestern face shots. Yes, they exist here and in abundance in Michigan. The folklore is factual—all true skiers need to ski Mount Bohemia.* Boho was, amazingly, once part of the Freedom Pass reciprocal lift-ticket coalition, which grants season pass holders three days each at partner resorts. These days, Boho manages its own corps of reciprocals. This is an incredible list for a $99 ($133 with fees) season pass:Voodoo MountainPerhaps the most compelling piece of the Bohemia story is that the ski area is nowhere near built out. The mountain adds new terrain pretty much every year - Glieberman details the locations of three new glade runs in the podcast. But four miles due north through the wilderness - or 16 miles and 30 minutes by car - sits Voodoo Mountain, a three-mile-wide snowtrap that currently hosts Boho's catskiing operation. They even have a trailmap:Those cut runs occupy just 125 acres, but Voodoo encompasses 1,800 acres across four peaks on a 700-foot vertical drop. Glieberman tells me on the podcast that a 1970s concept scoped out a sprawling resort with 22 chairlifts (if anyone is in possession of this concept map, please email me a copy). The terrain, Glieberman says, is not as rowdy or as singular as Boho's, but Voodoo averages more annual snowfall - 300-plus inches - and its terrain faces north, meaning it holds snow deep into spring. Here's another map, currently posted at the resort, showing conceptual future build-outs at Voodoo:The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 117/100 in 2022, and number 363 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com.The Storm is exploring the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe