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Mist and moss
Most importantly, I am happy beyond measure that DOMA was declared unconstitutional yesterday. In many areas of my life, I'm very optimistic, but I honestly never expected this to happen, even though I recognize that the country has been moving in a very promising direction. Those who want to deny same-sex couples legal rights, in spite of their utter irrationality, have always seemed to hold so much sway over public opinion and our laws.
Not now. The first thing I saw was a jubilant tweet from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
twelvepetals, and I thought "No, she must be talking about something else…" And then Rachel e-mailed me in all caps and size 80 font, and I swear I couldn't stop grinning (or focus on my work) for a good long time. It's hard at my job to know who I can talk to about this - everyone is accepting of me, thank goodness, but they all have different political opinions and I didn't want to feel alienated by anything other than utter excitement. I settled on one of my coworkers, a woman who I know has dated women, and we squealed over instant messenger for a while. Later, one of my other coworkers got a work-related e-mail regarding DOMA (I work in insurance) and was like "What's this DOMA thing?" A chorus of "I dunno" rose, and I skipped over and told them. They were all very happy for me :)
I still can scarcely believe that my marriage is recognized by the federal government. When I think about it objectively, how sad is that? I'm shocked at the reality that my marriage - proof of which I have in actual paper form, from the town hall and everything - is now considered to exist by the federal government of my country.
As usual,mermaiden says it best:
Marriage doesn't fix anything, and at the same time, it begins to fix everything. I have been the victim of hate crimes, almost every single one of my queer friends has been the victim of hate crimes. By being seen as equal by our nation, the tide of hatred MUST begin to change. This isn't about marriage, and it never WAS about marriage. It's about the dignity of a human being. By being afforded equal treatment by the country in which we live, it sets the standard for how we should be treated by everyone else. When we were second class citizens, stabbing a lesbian was something that happened all the time, in ways you never heard of (I never reported the hate crimes committed against me...want to bet how many others haven't, or have but got nowhere?), but as the tide of the very basis on HOW WE ARE TREATED changes because we are recognized as EQUAL, everything else will begin to change.
I've found this page very useful in both understanding a post-DOMA country and in seeing just how many of my rights were limited or utterly taken away by this awful act: http://www.freedomtomarry.org/resources/entry/after-doma-what-it-means-for-you
Second, I wanted to share some of the things we did last weekend when Rachel and I went with Rachel's mother to Errol, NH, the area where Rachel's parents and grandparents grew up.
MUCH driving happened XD In perfect conditions, it's a three-hour drive from our house to Errol. A Friday evening in the summer is not perfect conditions, and we also stopped at bead shops and for dinner along the way up, so it took us around 6 hours instead. We stayed at a lodging house that used to belong to Rachel's great-grandmother (the current owners turned it into a sort of bed-and-breakfast-without-the-breakfast). It was beautiful, so clean and well kept, and incredibly cool to stay in a place where Rachel's mother had so many memories.
Late Saturday morning we drove back down to the seacoast to attend the wedding of two of our friends, and it was really beautiful and fun. Since it was a vegan wedding, the food was amazing, and I didn't have to worry about what might be hiding in the appetizers! We were planning to drive back up to Errol that night, but after staying for some of the dancing, our GPS told us we wouldn't arrive in Errol until 1:30 a.m. Experimental night-driving on our way home from the Fairie Festival had shown that 12:30 is pretty much our cutoff, so we opted to sleep at home. It was nice and we got to relax with the kitties <3
We started again on Sunday morning at 5:45 a.m., and that time it really did only take us three hours (there's very little traffic at that time on a Sunday!). We arrived to find Rachel's mother still in bed, but she'd been up to have breakfast before AND she had been up in the middle of the night waiting for us - we had no cell service in Errol and although texting was sort of an option, texts would come through at random times and in random order, so our very careful notifications of our decision not to drive up at night were jumbled - but Rachel's mum is nothing if not confident, so she wasn't actually worried when we didn't show. She determined that a nap would be a good idea, so we had one from about 9:15 to 10:30, and good lord, if I could do that at work every day I would feel so much more like a human being.
After that, we had a little lunch and went hiking. This was my absolute favorite part of the trip. The weather was partly cloudy and very humid but cool. It had been raining on and off all weekend, and it rained Sunday, but only after we were done hiking :3 Our first stop was Moose Cave in Grafton Notch, Maine, and although it wasn't as much of an adventure as the other places, it was my favorite. You have to understand what the weather was like - we've had rain and rain and rain, and it's absolutely exploded the verdure. It was still fairly wet and overcast, so as we descended the wooden steps down into the thick forest around the cave, the black tree-trunks stood out amongst the vibrantly emerald moss and leaves and ferns. The air was so thick we were almost drinking it, and a mist hung about the edges of everything. The path narrowed farther down, and the earth rose up on either side in towering crags and boulders. Every surface was either wet gray or so green it practically fluoresced. Rising even above these was a sheer rock wall, and we could see the cracks in it where huge pieces were flaking off, pushed out by expanding ice from glaciers. The path led through the mossy corridors down to a crevice through which a black river ran. The area gets its name from a particularly deep part of the crevice, where (I'm told) an unfortunate moose once fell and was trapped. It wasn't hard to see that anyone falling in there would be very unlikely to survive - we could feel the freezing cold of the river even far above it as we were, wafting out in visible mists. Beyond the cave is a lake, almost reachable if you climb between a boulder and the cliff wall. The lake was calm and reflective, with trees emerging from it, but we couldn't find a way down to it. We climbed along a ledge on the other side of the boulder, past trees clinging onto the sheer rock wall, and everywhere you put your hand for balance, there was something growing under it - moss, or tiny ferns, or crinkly lichen.
We stopped at Screw Auger Falls, which is touristy enough to have restrooms (sort of… pit toilets, but you know, it's up Maine) and chased butterflies around a bit there, and then headed over to the main attraction… Step Falls :3
Step Falls is much less well known and considered something of a local secret. It's made up of a stretch of smooth, undulating rock bed, where water flows and cascades through several series of pools. Rachel's mother and her brothers used to spend hours there in the summer, damming up sections of the flow with logs to make slides and "bathtubs" in the sections that have been perfectly scooped out by the water. We started out on the regular hiking trail by the river's side, and then part way up, we moved out onto the river. The bed is wide and dry in many parts, and we hiked up the rocks for a ways before coming to a section where it looked like we'd have to go back into the woods to climb past. Not so! Rachel's mother being as adventurous as her daughter, she went right ahead to scale the ten-foot rise between levels of the river. We picked our way higher and higher, and with our help pushing from below, she climbed up a sheer rock face onto the smooth bed above. Rachel and I decided that her way had been slightly too harrowing for us, and we both found other ways to climb up the rise.
I was so proud of myself - when I was little, okay, at my middle school, we had these tractor tires that were sunk into the ground as a border around our playground. There was a gap between them in one place to let people through, and one game was to jump from the tire on one side of the gap to the other. I could never get up the courage to do this. My mother even brought me there on the weekend to practice, but I always fell short because I was too scared to jump that far. At Step Falls, I jumped between rocks, balanced precariously on tiny ledges, and clambered using both hands up stone faces. Frequently, I would hang onto roots and trees growing out of the rock itself, and I got into the habit of thanking each one that helped me cling on. When I got to the top, Rachel and her mother offered to help pull me up, but I insisted on doing it myself. It was exhilarating and empowering.
This is the view from where we climbed up. That tree in particular helped keep me from falling <3
And above this, the riverbed smooths out like a ribbon.
We took off our shoes and climbed up it, over hillocks of stone and through freezing rivulets. There were vast patches of moss, sodden and cool, and pools where rounded stones sat in the deepest parts like mortar and pestle. Here's a view looking down behind us.
And here's another :)
It was such a beautiful day. We returned to the hiking trail when we headed back down, since climbing sheer rock faces going down is harder than going up XD Of course the only time I fell was on the way down, slipping on a rounded rock - I landed flat on my backside and hurt my tailbone :\ But it couldn't put a dent in the greatness of our day!
Not now. The first thing I saw was a jubilant tweet from
twelvepetals, and I thought "No, she must be talking about something else…" And then Rachel e-mailed me in all caps and size 80 font, and I swear I couldn't stop grinning (or focus on my work) for a good long time. It's hard at my job to know who I can talk to about this - everyone is accepting of me, thank goodness, but they all have different political opinions and I didn't want to feel alienated by anything other than utter excitement. I settled on one of my coworkers, a woman who I know has dated women, and we squealed over instant messenger for a while. Later, one of my other coworkers got a work-related e-mail regarding DOMA (I work in insurance) and was like "What's this DOMA thing?" A chorus of "I dunno" rose, and I skipped over and told them. They were all very happy for me :)I still can scarcely believe that my marriage is recognized by the federal government. When I think about it objectively, how sad is that? I'm shocked at the reality that my marriage - proof of which I have in actual paper form, from the town hall and everything - is now considered to exist by the federal government of my country.
As usual,
mermaiden says it best:Marriage doesn't fix anything, and at the same time, it begins to fix everything. I have been the victim of hate crimes, almost every single one of my queer friends has been the victim of hate crimes. By being seen as equal by our nation, the tide of hatred MUST begin to change. This isn't about marriage, and it never WAS about marriage. It's about the dignity of a human being. By being afforded equal treatment by the country in which we live, it sets the standard for how we should be treated by everyone else. When we were second class citizens, stabbing a lesbian was something that happened all the time, in ways you never heard of (I never reported the hate crimes committed against me...want to bet how many others haven't, or have but got nowhere?), but as the tide of the very basis on HOW WE ARE TREATED changes because we are recognized as EQUAL, everything else will begin to change.
I've found this page very useful in both understanding a post-DOMA country and in seeing just how many of my rights were limited or utterly taken away by this awful act: http://www.freedomtomarry.org/resources/entry/after-doma-what-it-means-for-you
Second, I wanted to share some of the things we did last weekend when Rachel and I went with Rachel's mother to Errol, NH, the area where Rachel's parents and grandparents grew up.
MUCH driving happened XD In perfect conditions, it's a three-hour drive from our house to Errol. A Friday evening in the summer is not perfect conditions, and we also stopped at bead shops and for dinner along the way up, so it took us around 6 hours instead. We stayed at a lodging house that used to belong to Rachel's great-grandmother (the current owners turned it into a sort of bed-and-breakfast-without-the-breakfast). It was beautiful, so clean and well kept, and incredibly cool to stay in a place where Rachel's mother had so many memories.
Late Saturday morning we drove back down to the seacoast to attend the wedding of two of our friends, and it was really beautiful and fun. Since it was a vegan wedding, the food was amazing, and I didn't have to worry about what might be hiding in the appetizers! We were planning to drive back up to Errol that night, but after staying for some of the dancing, our GPS told us we wouldn't arrive in Errol until 1:30 a.m. Experimental night-driving on our way home from the Fairie Festival had shown that 12:30 is pretty much our cutoff, so we opted to sleep at home. It was nice and we got to relax with the kitties <3
We started again on Sunday morning at 5:45 a.m., and that time it really did only take us three hours (there's very little traffic at that time on a Sunday!). We arrived to find Rachel's mother still in bed, but she'd been up to have breakfast before AND she had been up in the middle of the night waiting for us - we had no cell service in Errol and although texting was sort of an option, texts would come through at random times and in random order, so our very careful notifications of our decision not to drive up at night were jumbled - but Rachel's mum is nothing if not confident, so she wasn't actually worried when we didn't show. She determined that a nap would be a good idea, so we had one from about 9:15 to 10:30, and good lord, if I could do that at work every day I would feel so much more like a human being.
After that, we had a little lunch and went hiking. This was my absolute favorite part of the trip. The weather was partly cloudy and very humid but cool. It had been raining on and off all weekend, and it rained Sunday, but only after we were done hiking :3 Our first stop was Moose Cave in Grafton Notch, Maine, and although it wasn't as much of an adventure as the other places, it was my favorite. You have to understand what the weather was like - we've had rain and rain and rain, and it's absolutely exploded the verdure. It was still fairly wet and overcast, so as we descended the wooden steps down into the thick forest around the cave, the black tree-trunks stood out amongst the vibrantly emerald moss and leaves and ferns. The air was so thick we were almost drinking it, and a mist hung about the edges of everything. The path narrowed farther down, and the earth rose up on either side in towering crags and boulders. Every surface was either wet gray or so green it practically fluoresced. Rising even above these was a sheer rock wall, and we could see the cracks in it where huge pieces were flaking off, pushed out by expanding ice from glaciers. The path led through the mossy corridors down to a crevice through which a black river ran. The area gets its name from a particularly deep part of the crevice, where (I'm told) an unfortunate moose once fell and was trapped. It wasn't hard to see that anyone falling in there would be very unlikely to survive - we could feel the freezing cold of the river even far above it as we were, wafting out in visible mists. Beyond the cave is a lake, almost reachable if you climb between a boulder and the cliff wall. The lake was calm and reflective, with trees emerging from it, but we couldn't find a way down to it. We climbed along a ledge on the other side of the boulder, past trees clinging onto the sheer rock wall, and everywhere you put your hand for balance, there was something growing under it - moss, or tiny ferns, or crinkly lichen.
We stopped at Screw Auger Falls, which is touristy enough to have restrooms (sort of… pit toilets, but you know, it's up Maine) and chased butterflies around a bit there, and then headed over to the main attraction… Step Falls :3
Step Falls is much less well known and considered something of a local secret. It's made up of a stretch of smooth, undulating rock bed, where water flows and cascades through several series of pools. Rachel's mother and her brothers used to spend hours there in the summer, damming up sections of the flow with logs to make slides and "bathtubs" in the sections that have been perfectly scooped out by the water. We started out on the regular hiking trail by the river's side, and then part way up, we moved out onto the river. The bed is wide and dry in many parts, and we hiked up the rocks for a ways before coming to a section where it looked like we'd have to go back into the woods to climb past. Not so! Rachel's mother being as adventurous as her daughter, she went right ahead to scale the ten-foot rise between levels of the river. We picked our way higher and higher, and with our help pushing from below, she climbed up a sheer rock face onto the smooth bed above. Rachel and I decided that her way had been slightly too harrowing for us, and we both found other ways to climb up the rise.
I was so proud of myself - when I was little, okay, at my middle school, we had these tractor tires that were sunk into the ground as a border around our playground. There was a gap between them in one place to let people through, and one game was to jump from the tire on one side of the gap to the other. I could never get up the courage to do this. My mother even brought me there on the weekend to practice, but I always fell short because I was too scared to jump that far. At Step Falls, I jumped between rocks, balanced precariously on tiny ledges, and clambered using both hands up stone faces. Frequently, I would hang onto roots and trees growing out of the rock itself, and I got into the habit of thanking each one that helped me cling on. When I got to the top, Rachel and her mother offered to help pull me up, but I insisted on doing it myself. It was exhilarating and empowering.
This is the view from where we climbed up. That tree in particular helped keep me from falling <3
And above this, the riverbed smooths out like a ribbon.
We took off our shoes and climbed up it, over hillocks of stone and through freezing rivulets. There were vast patches of moss, sodden and cool, and pools where rounded stones sat in the deepest parts like mortar and pestle. Here's a view looking down behind us.
And here's another :)
It was such a beautiful day. We returned to the hiking trail when we headed back down, since climbing sheer rock faces going down is harder than going up XD Of course the only time I fell was on the way down, slipping on a rounded rock - I landed flat on my backside and hurt my tailbone :\ But it couldn't put a dent in the greatness of our day!