February 23, 2005

• Life (for me) just isn’t that simple.

  Yesterday’s attempt to bring my journal up to date after the recent
  hiatus elicited some questions and suggestions.  A few readers
  questioned why I live out here on the frigid edge of the back of beyond,
  and/or suggested other places to live that they thought would be better
  for me.  The one who came closest to something I might be able to
  live with was lupa, with a hint about moving to the Southwest.

  I couldn’t survive a summer anywhere that temperatures were in the
  hundreds.  Even at temps just in the eighties, my body
  malfunctions.  This is what makes Alaska my best choice for
  year-round living.  If I was careful about choosing a spot in the
  American Southwest, or at a high elevation in Northern Mexico, I could
  probably live with a snowbird’s lifestyle, winters there and summers in
  Alaska.  The lack of sufficient money for such a lifestyle is not
  the only reason I don’t do it.  It’s not that simple.  Even
  if I were to attain wealth through my work, or win a lottery, or have
  some nutty philanthropist take an interest in my welfare, there are
  other complicating factors.

  Chemical sensitivities make any town or city hazardous to my physical
  health, and many of the people who live in them are hazardous to my
  mental health.  One of the best things about living here is the
  scarcity of indoor plumbing.  Few of my neighbors bathe
  frequently, and counterintuitive as this may seem to some of you, it is
  bathing that most often causes people to stink.  Town-dwellers who
  bathe every day usually reek of perfume.  Apparently, for most
  just getting clean is not the reason for bathing.  They then go on
  and cover themselves with chemical scents.  Most of the people I
  encounter at the spring when I’m getting water smell like I do, like a
  human being.  I can live with that.

  Water is a big factor, too.  I would need to find a place with a
  clean water supply, as I have here.  Clean air is just as
  important.  That’s why I mentioned the high elevation. 
  Low-lying areas all over the lower 48 are thick with air
  pollution.  I wouldn’t thrive in any of those places where you can
  see the air.  Even here, when the wind stirs up the glacial silt,
  volcanic ash, mold spores, etc., or when wildfires or volcanic
  eruptions pollute the air, I have trouble breathing.  The winter
  that Greyfox and I honeymooned in the Southwest, I did reasonably well
  in the mountains of Southwest New Mexico, except for the mold in one of
  the places we stayed and the dust storms that began in early spring.

  Cold has to be fairly extreme to affect my breathing:  below minus
  ten Fahrenheit (minus twenty-five Celsius).  Here, it seldom gets
  that cold other than in mid-winter.  We are past that time this
  year already.  Even in the two months when it does sometimes get
  that cold, it’s usually only for a few days at a time.  Many of
  the winters I have lived here, I have managed to stay indoors during
  the coldest weather.  Only twice this winter did I have any
  temperature-related breathing problems.  Both times, I could have
  avoided it if I’d been alert to the hazard and chosen to stay
  inside.  The first time, I could have opted not to keep my
  appointment, and the second time I could have asked for help instead of
  going to the spring myself.  In the first case, I’d made a
  commitment and didn’t want to break it.  In the latter instance,
  it would have meant getting well water instead of spring water, and I
  chose as I did out of a personal preference.  I survived, so I
  couldn’t have been too far wrong.

  Ironically, occasionally some friend in a warm climate invites me to
  spend a “summer vacation” with them.  I suppose for most of them
  it would be unthinkable to invite someone to spend a winter vacation
  there.  To them, their winters are harsh and cold, while summers
  are warm and green.  Their summers, to me, would be sweltering and
  oppressive.  Greyfox (coming from Pennsylvania) and I got lots of
  laughs during our winter in New Mexico when we’d see people wearing
  parkas at temperatures in the fifties, while we were comfortable in
  t-shirts.  By the time we got out of Silver City in March, it was
  too hot for me and my eyes were red and swollen from the tree
  pollen.   Doug and I spent January and February of 1994
  camped out on the green, flowering desert north of Yuma, Arizona. 
  That was for us a year without a winter.  Several times I caught
  myself wondering what the place would be like in winter.  Then I’d
  remember childhood trips across that desert in the summer, when it was
  baked dry and unbearably hot.

  The spring pollen season here is mercifully brief, and the fall mold
  season ends quickly with the first snowfall.  During my second
  summer in Alaska, this thought occurred to me:  “Anyone who
  survives an Alaskan winter would be nuts to leave and miss the
  summer.”  It remains true for me.  I wouldn’t mind missing an
  occasional winter here, but I’m not crazy enough to go Outside for the
  summer.  A summer full of light without excess heat is the best of
  all worlds to me.  As long as economics and other constraints
  necessitate my being in one place year-round, I’ll take the hazards and
  hardships of winter here over those of summer anyplace else.

  All the readers who presumed to advise me on health matters chose to
  zero in on the geographical angles.  Nobody mentioned something
  that has been on my mind a lot since I started studying the
  biochemistry of “romance” or lust, limerance and attachment.  As I
  have mentioned before, I had lengthy remissions of my chronic disorders
  several times when I was “in love.”  I’m more interested in
  finding ways to increase my dopamine and norepineprine levels and
  decrease my serotonin level than I am in finding a place where
  temperatures are never too hot or too cold for me.  I am
  experienced enough to realize that I don’t want to live with the
  chemical dependence and rebound effect, etc., from simply boosting
  those neurotransmitters with chemical expedients.  Likewise, I
  don’t think it would be wise to contrive a way to get thunderstruck and
  fall in love — that would be almost certain to complicate an already
  overcomplicated life.  As I said, it’s just not that simple.

  By the way, Koji’s bad dreams are gone.  As I mentioned elsewhere,
  that traumatic phase lasted only a few days.  As soon as the moose
  was butchered and out of the yard, he had no hesitation about going out
  there.  As Doug digs up and removes the bloody snow that was
  covered by a subsequent snowfall (to make the yard less attractive to
  hungry bears as they come out of hibernation), Koji is a great
  help.  He keeps finding the bloody patches, digging them up, and
  bringing chunks of the gory red ice to the door.  I still won’t
  let him bring it inside, however.  He has to eat his crunchy moose
  blood outside.
  

  • 2:28 pm
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