Pandeiro at the Hoot!

Just a short note to say that my friend Jerry and I were pressured/encouraged into playing at the Hootenanny, the local country-music open-mic in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, last Monday. It's a very local, very genuine scene - the same locals come week after week. There's a surprising amount of talent, actually - some great guitar, singing, banjo, and the tiniest little harmonica I have ever seen, accordions, goofy songs ("Glory glory HalleLUUU-jah, MY SUMMER GUESTS ARE GONE!") and even a guy playing a train whistle.

So naturally Jerry and I signed up, and he played guitar and yodelled while I accompanied him on pandeiro. I think it's the first time there's been pandeiro at the Hoot? The highlight was definitely Jerry yodelling his way through "Ol' Montan" (that's the one that goes "I'm going buy me a painted pony, I'm gonna ride ride ride away"). Which, who knew, turns out to make an EXCELLENT fast samba. The Hoot crowd gave us an extremely warm response. Or as our friend Taylor put it, "You guys got a whoop!" My little contribution to bringing samba to the Wild West. People were walking up to Jerry for hours afterwards saying "Nice yodellin', mister! (and I got one "And, you, there, nice job on that little tambourine!")

Taylor and Jamie then brought the house down with a heart-rending rendition of "Angel From Montgomery" that actually made me cry. My god, Jamie has a Voice. OK, so maybe not every song needs a pandeiro, but Ol' Montan definitely does.

The best ever bear bell

So that was my little bear incident, and it made me realize that all the time I was carrying that damn annoying bear bell last year, it probably actually was working. (You always think your bear bell is unnecessary, because you never see any bears when you are hiking with a bear bell. But that's the thing about bear bells... was it unnecessary? or was it doing its job really, really well?)

So I went into town the next day to the hiking store to buy a bear bell and pepper spray. But they didn't have bear bells! They were out of bear bells! Oh noooo! I did buy the pepper spray ("35 FOOT MAX DISTANCE ULTRA 2% CAPSAICIN PEPPER SPRAY! Caution, do not provoke bears with pepper spray on purpose")

The idiotic salesman kept telling me pepper spray "works better" than a bear bell - well, it's true that a bear bell won't stop a bear from charging, but the POINT Is, the bear bell keeps it from charging in the first place. You want to have both, but if you have to pick one I honestly would've picked the bear bell. The bear bell lets it know you're coming.

I did buy the pepper spray. But I was really bothered by the lack of a bear bell. I couldn't find my bear bell from last year. I'd been planning on hiking Signal Mountain the next day, and while Jenny Lake is only on the fringe of grizz territory, Signal Mountain is what you could call Heavy Duty Grizz Country. And the trail is not heavily hiked. Often it's completely deserted all day. You really do not want to be alone on a trail on Signal Mountain without letting the bears know that you're there.

I had to find some way of making noise.

Driving back to camp I heard a familiar little rattling in the back seat... my tamborim, frigideira and pandeiro, bouncing around together in my drum bag. Oh, of course!

My tamborim!

I've really been wanting some practice time on tamborim - want to get it seriously up to speed and get my stamina up. I realized that if I am really going to keep on travelling like this, I need to play little instruments. Not surdos and timbals and alfaias.

So I spent the next entire afternoon doing the spectacularly beautiful Signal Mountain hike, practicing tamborim the ENTIRE tie, while hiking. All the wildlife of Signal Mountain now know all about the distinction between the dois-e-um and tres-e-um styles, and the frigideira style as well; and they're all well acquainted with Lions Break 1 and with Junior Teixeira's Mao-Morta (Dead Hand) break from Monobloco. I am pretty sure I heard the ravens and some ground squirrels singing along with Mao-Morta after a while.

I practiced super-slow, super-duper-slow, and fast, and faster; I discovered that practicing tamborim in time with your feet, while hiking uphill at high altitude, is extremely good for making you not rush, because if you rush, you begin to pass out; I practiced in the sun and in the shade and in the rain.

A few days later I found I am for the first time EVER able to play sustained tres-e-um at 140 bpm, and my dois-e-um is suddenly up to 110bpm, and both are far cleaner than they have ever been. My annoying, hard-to-shake habit of missing the upbeat occasionally on tres-e-um is GONE. Even the frigideira pattern (played on tamb) is bipping along pretty well.

Tamborim as bear bell. I recommend it highly. It'll clean up your tamb playing like you wouldn't believe, and it'll save your life.

PS I walked directly past a blacktailed deer buck while I playing tamborim at top volume, and he didn't bat an eye, just kept on grazing. I guess he knew I was coming.

My grizz

I was hiking around Jenny Lake (Grand Teton National Park) the other day. I hadn't really planned it, just was driving down that magnificient, stunning, most-beautiful-in-the-world drive along the feet of the great Tetons range, when I saw the sign to the Jenny Lake pull out and I suddenly thought: I've never been up to Inspiration Point yet.

So I hiked the whole way around, eight miles; a pretty easy flat hike most of the way, with one grueling uphill to the stunning Inspiration Point (where I met the fattest, tamest, golden-mantled ground squirrel I've ever had the pleasure to meet. His good luck that his territory is smack at the lunch spot of the most-hiked hike in all of Grand Teton National Park.) There were lots of other hikers around at first; but then it got late (I'd been netting for birds since 5:30am and hadn't started on the hike till 3pm. Still plent of daylight, but it was definitely getting darker and duskier. Rainclouds moved in; and a tremendous wind picked up; and all the other hikers scurried for the Jenny Lake boat that would whisk them to the parking lot back on the other side of the lake. But I was all set for rain, and it was only a couple miles on a very easy trail back, so I kept on walking.

The wind was whooshing, a few fat raindrops were pelting down, the tree leaves were rattling overhead, when I stepped around a corner and heard a HNFF! I looked up; there was a bear, about fifteen feet away. Its head was down in a bush. It was furiously digging; probably going after a ground squirrel or something. I thought "Wow, cool, a black bear! And what a pretty one too; that lovely brown color with those pretty blond streaks all over its big humped shoulder..... oh, it's a grizz."

I used to work in Alaska and so I've dealt some with working in grizzly and polar bear country. Grizz are usually fairly sensible. (Polar bears scare the living shit out of me, on the other hand). I never have worried about grizz much because 99% of the time, if they hear you coming, they will get the hell out of your way and be long gone and you will never even know they were there. There are currently a MILLION tourists going through the Tetons and Yellowstone every month, and there are several thousand grizzlies living in the area who must see tourists every single day, and there have been hardly any "incidents". Which means, 99.99% of the time, the grizzly quietly goes the other way. Most bear "incidents" occur when a bear is taken by surprise by a lone, quiet hiker that the bear didn't know was there till the hiker got too close and the bear panicked.

However, there's always that 0.01%. Two days before, a female grizzly had gone on a rampage near Yellowstone and had attacked two people and killed and eaten a third, a man from Michigan camping by himself. The next day the "grizzly response team" caught and euthanized that bear (with a trap baited, creepily enough, with "pieces of the dead man's tent"), even going so far as to confirm, with DNA, that it was the same bear that had killed the man.

So usually people carry a bear bell to let the bear know they're there; and pepper spray in case it charges. I like bear bells; I'd rather keep the bear from charging than hope the pepper spray will work during a charge. (Some bears continue the charge despite the pepper spray.) Of course I had neither, that day; but that's why I'd chosen the Jenny Lake hike, it's the single most highly travelled hike in the whole park and bears usually avoid hikes that are that well travelled.

I stood there and watched the huuuuuuge bear ripping up the ground, with its head down in the bush, what seemed inches away from me, with the wind howling overhead and the rain pelting down, and the wind in my face, blowing my scent away from the bear, and I realized: It doesn't know I'm here. I'm about to take it by surprise.

A very stupid part of my brain said "Ooo, a bear! Get out your camera and take a picture!"

Another stupid brain part said: "You got this close without it minding; just walk right on past; I bet it won't mind."

A much smarter and very ancient module of my brain, one that had long been sleeping, suddenly spin up into high overdrive. It lit up brightly and said: "THIS IS THE ANCIENT ENEMY. THIS IS THE OLDEST GOD. BACK UP SLOWLY, NOW. DO NOT GET OUT YOUR CAMERA. DO NOT TRY TO WALK PAST. BACK UP SLOWLY."

I backed up slowly and as dead quiet as I could. I backed around a turn. I backed up some more. I backed around another turn. I backed up a little more. I backed up till I was perched right above icy Jenny Lake, figuring I could maybe jump into the lake if the grizz started galloping toward me.

Then I started singing the Hey Bear Song. All the people around here know this song. The lyrics go: "Hey Bear! I'm here! I just want to go past, I don't want any trouble! Hey Bear! I'm just gonna walk on by, okay?" (I've literally heard people sing it. My favorite version, which I heard a guy singing in the dead of night in the middle of Signal Mountain: "I'm a HU-man, I'm a HU-man, I'm a HU-man, you're a BEAR! I gotta BEER, I gotta BEER, and you DON'T, cause you're a BEAR!")

It was six miles back; too far to get by dark; I couldn't go back that way. So I inched forward, and further forward, and around the critical turn:

There was the dug-up ground squirrel hole.

No bear.

Wind sighing overhead. Rain pelting down.

Nobody in sight.

99.99% of the time, if the bear knows you're there, it just sneaks away.

Progressive car insurance vs. the gypsies

I'm finally back on the West Coast from my Grand Teton National Park fieldwork. We had no electricity this time (we were in the no-generator part of the Gros Ventre campground) so I wasn't on the laptop much and was not keeping up any of the blogs, obviously. But I'm going to squeeze in a couple updates.

Got into a fight with my car insurance company, Progressive, last week. I'd made the tactical error of getting a chip in my windshield fixed while driving through Seattle on my way to Wyoming, which suddenly convinced Progressive that I either live in Wyoming or Washington, but NOT in Oregon. They sent me a little email that I didn't get till I was living in a campsite in the Tetons: "We are cancelling your car insurance policy effective September 1st unless you can provide proof of residency in the state of Oregon."

Where do I live, anyway? If you tally up all my time this year it comes to:

Ten weeks in Brazil (Carnival)
Two weeks in Boston (whale research)
One week in Seattle
Three weeks in Portland (music)
Another week in Seattle
Three weeks in Greece (fun)
Three weeks in Portland again (music, working on book)
Three weeks in Wyoming (fieldwork)
One week in Seattle
Two days in Portland (picking up drums for Brazil Camp)
One week in California (Brazil Camp)
One week in Nevada (Burning Man)
FIVE whole weeks in Portland!!
Three weeks in Brazil
One week in Chicago
Four weeks in Boston.

Portland wins, right? Eleven whole weeks in Portland! But all my mail goes to Seattle, I've spent almost half the year in foreign countries, I've put in more rehearsal hours with Cubango and Monobloco (my groups in Brazil) than with my own Portland-based Lions; and I've been at living in so many Portland addresses that I'm incapable of remembering my own zip code. "Uh, wait a minute, it's either 97203 or 97211 or 97212... or 98115 or 98195... wait a sec..." I actually have to look up my damn zip code, every time, in my iPhone, where I have it filed in a little electronic note.

Anyway, I placed a phone call to Progressive:
Progressive agent: "All you need to do to prove residency is fax us a utility bill that has your current Oregon address and that is dated within the last 60 days."
Me: "But, I don't have any utility bills."
Her: "We also accept bank statements. Or an evidence-of-residence letter from your Oregon employer. Or a copy of your lease."
Me: "But I don't have any of those."
Her: (befuddled pause) "...How can you not pay any utilities and have no lease and have no bank statements and no employer and still say that you live in Oregon?"
Me: "I'm unemployed this year. I don't have a lease; I pay week-to-week. Utilities are included in the rent. I don't have any paper bank statements because I do all my banking online - they don't send me physical statements any more."
Her: (silence)
Me: "But I could have Bank of America mail me a paper statement, but it always takes them at least two weeks to do that."
Her: "That's too late. We need it within, oh, ten days at the very latest."
Me: "What if I had AT&T mail me a paper cell phone bill?"
Her: (snippily) "That's no good, because you can have a cell phone bill mailed anywhere."
Me (thinking: but you can have a bank statement mailed anywhere too... ): "What if I show you my Oregon driver's license, or my Oregon car registration?"
Her: "Sorry, we don't accept those. According to this list I have here, let's see, if you don't have a bank statement or utility bill, you'll have to show us an Oregon voter registration card."
Me: "But I don't have an Oregon voter registration card right now. 'Cause I'm moving before the next election anyway."
Her: "I'm sorry, you'll have to get one."

I wondered what the state of Oregon thinks about all this. Does Oregon think I live in Oregon? Oregon always has seemed happy enough to take 5.8% of my income in state taxes every year, and has never asked me to prove residency. I looked up Oregon's own criteria for whether or not you live in Oregon, which turned out to be rather charming: You live in Oregon "if you think of Oregon as your home."

New call to Progressive Insurance Company:
Me: "I think of Oregon as my home."
Her: "That's nice, but we have to see a utility bill, bank statement or voter registration card, with your Oregon address on it, dated within the last sixty days, or we will be forced to cancel your car insurance policy as of September 1st."

But, but, I pay taxes in Oregon! I have an Oregon driver's license and an Oregon car registration! I even changed my phone number so it would start with that beautiful Oregon 503!

Sigh. I drove the 20 miles through the vast valley of Jackson Hole, dodging bison (literally; they were all over the road) to get to the town of Jackson, Wyoming, so I could use their library to print out an Oregon voter registration card application, and then drive to the Jackson post office to mail it off...

... and I discovered ALL you need to get an Oregon voter registration card, mailed to ANY address that you care to make up, is an Oregon driver's license number. Progressive requires the Oregon voter registration card, but won't accept the actual Oregon driver's license? Ours is not to reason why.

As it turned out, the voter registration card didn't arrive in time, nor did the paper statement that I requested from Bank of America. So I solved the whole thing with one simple call to State Farm ("I live in Oregon and would like to insure my car starting September 1st." "Sure!"). Got a better rate, and a much friendlier attitude. So much for Progressive.

But the whole thing did remind me of how ill-suited our society is for the concept of people being nomadic and not having a permanent address. If you spend your year in five different states, or half the year in a different country, where do you actually live? The same problem occurs with wildlife management, actually - I've run into it in my professional career. Those $*!% bison and elk keep migrating out of Yellowstone National Park and crossing state boundaries. They just won't stay PUT in one state like they are supposed to! Stupid bison! The Yellowstone wolves have recently gotten clear across Idaho to Oregon. (And Oregon, perhaps realizing that these wolves clearly "think of Oregon as their home", has allowed them to stay. Unlike the other states recently colonized by gray wolves, Oregon has announced it will not be doing any wolf hunting.) Then there's the time that we found we weren't allowed to carry Lapland longspurs (birds) through Canada between Alaska and the United States, because they are "American birds" - even though, as we explained exasperatedly to the customs agent, they FLY through Canada on their own when they migrate to Alaska every year. ( "What if we let them out of their cages, and they fly through Canada, and we follow them, and we re-catch them once they leave Canada?" "Oh, that would be fine; but you just can't bring them into Canada yourselves, because they're American birds.") And then there's the entangled right whales that swim blithely across the US/Canada border in the Bay of Fundy, requiring the American and Canadian whale-disentanglement teams to do a ridiculously bureaucratic hand-off of the care of the whale from one team to another. The American disentanglement team goes home, the Canadian disentanglement team motors out...Then the whale swims back across the invisible border a day, or an hour, later.

So, me and my birds and whales; migratory, nomadic, call it whatever you want, but it's the original way to be.

After five years of samba-gypsy travelling, I have been through long, alternating phases of frustration, exhilaration, disillusionment, exhaustion, freedom, resignation about having no permanent home. First, you love it. Then, about two years in, you get "SO FUCKIN' SICK of being a FUCKIN' NOMAD!!!", as one of my world-traveller friends memorably put it one evening.

And then, as you settle into it for the long haul - beyond two years - you realize it's not a temporary phase any more; it's a permanent way of being. Your sense of "home" simultaneously vanishes, and also expands, as the other places that you've stayed also become your home. Rio, too, becomes your home. Then London. Then Crete. All beds become equally comfortable, all roofs equally beloved. When you wake up in the morning you have no idea which way you are facing; where the street is, where the door is; what city you are in. It ceases to bother you. Your physical possessions shrink. Your land-based ties are successively jettisoned, simplified, or moved to the Internet. And the knowledge that you can up and go to Thailand in a moment if you want, or London, or Crete, or wherever you want.... or... New Zealand! Istanbul! .... and STAY there, for weeks and weeks and months and months. To know that you can hop in my car and go live in Grand Teton National Park for months, if you want; to hear the nighthawks calling overhead, see the stars, to dodge the bison in the morning, to walk in the lupine meadows all day... without having to arrange anything. Or notify anybody. Or stop any mail or set any of those friggin' stupid light timers. Or pay a mortgage or pay any utilities.... you can just GO.

When people ask 'Where do you live?' I sometimes now get a deer-in-the-headlights look. I have tried to train myself to just spit out "Oregon", but sometimes I stall, because though I do indeed think of Oregon as my home, I also know perfectly well that I sure don't spend much time there. Eleven weeks ain't much. Recently when people ask me the inevitable "Where do you live?" I say "Here." If I'm in Athens that day, I say Athens; if I'm in Jackson Hole, I say Jackson Hole. Even if I'm only going to be there for that one day. 'Cause I'm living there at the moment that they asked me the question. I'm ALIVE, RIGHT HERE, right now, this moment, so "here" is where I live.