20th Century Man (or How I Learned to Knit)

I spent most of yesterday afternoon planting bulbs in the garden. An arduous task that I'm paying for dearly today with the blisters on my palms, the crick in my neck, and the fact that my arms are too sore to even lift above my head. While I was putting out some 300 bulbs (!) I was listening to a backlog of This American Life podcasts and one of the episodes that came on was one called Twentieth Century Man. It pointed out to me something that as an American I'd completely taken for granted and as an ex-pat something that fundamentally sets me apart from my new countrymen.

It's this entirely American idea about how one can completely reinvent themselves whenever it suits them. You know, sell off all your worldly possessions, pack up the car and hit the road with your Rand McNally under your arm and a song in your heart. The idea that it's perfectly acceptable, and even admirable, to start a completely new life for yourself is altogether foreign to most of the people I know here. It's not that the British are exactly homebodies themselves, note Captain Cook, Sir Edmund Hillary, um... the Pilgrims.

We Americans even have slogans to glorify this ideology: pull yourself up by your bootstraps or go from rags to riches, start with a clean slate - and an entire industry supports this concept, think American Idol, The Apprentice, the Rocky movies! It's this confidence in the ability to be able to move between social classes that is so important to the American national identity, and is something that is easier said than done in Britain. There really isn't a lot of social mobility here. Kids stay at home with their parents until they're in their mid 20's, because you simply can't afford to move out. Also, everyone is so tuned in to each other's accents. There are regional accents like anywhere else, but there's also the ones that regulate class and social status.

It's not just the rags to riches scenario that sets us to the road, Americans, it's also this concept of freedom that Janis Joplin sings about, Jack Kerouac writes about, that Chris McCandless is immortalized by John Krakauer for in Into the Wild that pulls at the heartstrings of most Americans. Certainly not the 'freedom fries' sense of the word, but the kind that Alison Krauss talks about when she sings that she's not coming home until "they stop building roads." The riding the range, no fences, carte blanche kind of freedom that we find so appealing, and consider a "god-given" right.

What am I on about? This particular episode of This American Life got me thinking about my own itchy feet and what motivated me through the past 10 years where I never lived more than 6 months in one place. My mother has an address book devoted singly to me. My sister's given up on writing down my phone number because she just figures it'll change soon enough. Why is this relevant to a knitting blog? Let me explain.

It was the summer of 2000 when I landed on my feet in Acadia National Park, Maine after a long, but legendary winter in the redwoods of California. There were a few of us that park-bounced together for a number of years, earning money with whatever job we could get - mostly restaurant work - saving tips in a shoebox to fund the next adventure. When penniless, the idea was that you just turned up at a National Park and waited, there was always work with room and board on hand, and a room with a view at that! (See below for photo credits) Maine meant slinging popovers and lobster stew at the Jordan Pond House Restaurant and living in a tiny dormitory with two bunk-beds an arm's length apart that we dubbed the Wooden Submarine.

The Wooden Submarine Gang is still a big part of my life, we still keep in touch on a fairly regular basis, albeit primarily via scrabulous on facebook. But two of them came to my wedding and one of them I'll be spending New Year's with in Berlin this year. It was the summer I first dipped a toe into the Atlantic, first got kicked out of a bar (one of us, banned for the rest of the summer!), the first summer that consisted solely of bonfires on the beach with guitars and fireflies, with sultry summer dives from reckless rocky perches into the deep, cool waters of the lakes of Mount Desert Island.

Look at these photos and you'll get an idea of what we were up against, there was bound to be romance on the horizon. The thing that none of us probably would have admitted at the time, but in retrospect is so obviously clear, is that each of us was infatuated with one Wendy Beale. She was the cook who put the board in room & board. And by infatuated with I mean, we worshipped, idolized, marvelled at, wondered about, and wanted to be just like her. It was like she was the cool babysitter you had when you were a little girl.

I'm not sure if the other girls would even admit now, but the with the way we talked about her, quoted her, immediately read any book she would recommend or bought any CD she would mention even in passing, I'm sure it was true. The thing is, she read great books! Deny Beryl Markham's 'West with the Night' or Pam Houston's 'Cowboys are My Weakness'. Just try it, I dare you. It wasn't just the books she would recommend, but the way in which she would do it. She'd say something like "I'm surprised you haven't read The God of Small Things, Brooke, it's one of those books that all the strong women in my life have read." Gush. Giggle. Beam.


Wendy spent 9 winters working in Antarctica, supplying supper to the research scientists and support crew there. When you asked her about it she said things like "The first time you go it's for the experience. The second time it's for the money. The third time, it's because you don't fit in anywhere else anymore." My eyes widened. I actually quoted her later that day. (And even now, years later.) She explained the symbolism of the Hei Matau, the Maori Fish Hook Necklace, that she always wore around her neck and the man for whom she wore it and advised me on which ports to go to in the Mediteranean, and when, to find work as cabin crew on the yachts that sailed the world. God, she was cool. Not only that, but Wendy knew how to knit and had a cabled fisherman's sweater for each of her long winters at the South Pole.

If I'm honest, I'd first considered knitting the winter before, back in Humboldt, when one of the Wooden Submarine girls, J, had first donned a pair of pointed sticks and armed herself with a skein of Noro silk and fashioned a truly glorious hat. It seemed easy enough, but it took my school-girl style girl crush to really get me to commit. My first hat was a success! It was a simple stockingette stitch, knit in the round, easy peasy. Soon, I had a collection of hats, then a scarf or two. Knitting nearly immediately became an essential part of any journey and helped reduce boredom during lengthy travel time of road trips and transoceanic flights.

As all good things must end, or so they say, this tale ends in scandal. Sadly, we were all heartbroken to learn that our blessed Wendy had been sleeping with one of the Wooden Submarine Girls, J's, boyfriend, the one who'd she met the summer before in Alaska and who'd also been a close friend of mine. Quite frankly, I get it, guys are dumb and I can see what the attraction was all about. But I am still baffled by what the hell SHE was thinking. This was the woman who, in my eyes, was the essence of cool, but deep down was really a sneaky little minx! Devastating! I mourned along with J, not only for the loss of her guy from our lives, but for the deep seated blow of the betrayal that Wendy had dealt all of us. We thought she was it. We were wrong.

We left Maine, knitting in the passenger seat. We road tripped to San Francisco and boarded a Korean Air flight bound for Bangkok. I'd like to say we never looked back, but I do look back, and frequently, I can't speak for anyone else. There's a small part of me that wishes I was still trying to run out of road. There's an even bigger part of me that loves my husband and our life together here. I'm infatuated now with the idea of exploring all of the things that stability has to offer. Like sewing machines, victorian lace, cupcakes, log cabin quilts, cables and beads, decoupage, sunflowers, refurbishing the dining room furniture, growing vegetables, baking bread....

photo kudos: planet pixel on flickr, bar harbor bike shop, visitusa.com, Gary Stanley, and the Acadia Corporation.