“I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
Walden, Henry David Thoreau
While staying in Concord, Massachusetts, we made a side trip to Walden Pond. How could we not go to the place where Thoreau did his experiment, living in his cabin in the woods, especially having a cabin of our own out in the Alaska wilderness?
Though my husband warned me in advance, I was still a little disappointed. Mostly because what was wilderness in Thoreau’s time is now swallowed by urban sprawl, complete with a major highway running right by the pond. On the day we went, it was nearly 80 degrees, and people were out enjoying the water. We walked around the pond and eventually came to the site of the old cabin. Many people over time have come and placed pebbles and stones on the historic site.
View of the cabin looking up from the fire pit.
This trip really made me appreciate the solitude and peace we experience at our own cabin out in the interior of Alaska. While Chicken is a tourist town of sorts, having been the second town incorporated during the gold rush days in Alaska, it will probably never reach the level of tourism that Walden Pond sees. In the summers, with the mining activity, the region can see a population boom of about 300 people, not counting tourists. In the winters, only 5 or 6 people stay to tough it out.
The cabin at night.
As I write this, we are packing our truck, getting ready to head out to the cabin for the week. Already, I can’t wait to disconnect and do some good writing and reading. Hopefully the snow will be gone and we will get some good snow. I will let you know how it went when we get back.
Me, in front of the cabin in the fall of 2015, before we had windows.
“I like the independent feeling; and though not an easy life, it is a free one, and I enjoy it. I can’t do much with my hands; so I will make a battering ram with my head and make a way through this rough-and-tumble world.” Louisa May Alcott, Letter to her Father 1856
Sign in front of Orchard House, Concord, MA
When we started planning our trip to New England for my graduation from WPI for my masters in May of 2018, my husband asked me what places I would like to see in Massachusetts. Without hesitation, I told him that we had to stop in Concord and see the Orchard House, the place where Louisa May Alcott wrote many books after she recovered from her near fatal illness contracted serving a nurse during the Civil War.
In the fourth grade, I checked out Little Women, at first from the school library, and then from the county library. I watched the cartoon version on TV and then the 1933 version with Katherine Hepburn starring as Jo. My mom and dad bought me a hardbound copy of the book which I kept until just a few years ago, which I passed onto my niece. I read many of her other books over my formative years, and I enjoyed them all. Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, Jo’s Boys, the list goes on and on. But it the life of the woman herself intrigued me as I grew older and became a woman myself.
Orchard House, Concord, MA
I stood a little in awe at Orchard House, looking at the place where such afar ahead of her time woman lived and wrote. From an early age, she loved to write and act and was encouraged to do both by her mother Abby May Alcott. Her mother was an activist, a suffragette, and considered to be one of the first social workers in Boston, before the idea of a ‘social worker’ existed. The family were staunch abolitionists and leaders in the Transcendentalist Movement. The family often struggled financially but were surrounded but great thinkers of the time: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathanial Hawthorn, and not the least Margaret Fuller.
On a trip such as this, one cannot help but indulge in buying books. We are only half-way through our trip at this point, and I am already wondering if we are going to need to purchase another box or suitcase just for all of the wonderful little treasures of literature we have picked up so far on this journey. One particular treat, which I will refer to often, I picked up while I was at Orchard House: Louisa May Alcott, Her Life, Letters and Journals.
While I have read much on Louisa, this book was both inspiring and humbling at the same time. Possibly because of the point in life at which I find myself. As previously mentioned, I am on this trip right now, to attend my graduation. It has taken me four years (and a good chunk of my sanity) to obtain an online Master’s in Engineering in Electrical Power Systems. There was quite a bit of struggle along the way, and more than once, I was sure I was doomed. But here I am, in less than a week, about to receive my diploma. And now I read about a genius of a woman, who read Plato and Goethe while I still played with barbies and had to work as a seamstress or a governess just to get by and support her family.
“Sewing was her resource when nothing else offered, but it is pitiful to think of her as confined to such work when great powers were lying dormant in her mind. Still Margaret Fuller said that a year of enforced quiet in the country devoted mainly to sewing was useful to her, since she reviewed and examined the treasures laid up in her memory; and doubtless Louisa Alcott thought out many a story which afterward delighted the world while her fingers busily piled the needle. Yet it was a great deliverance when she first found the products of her brain would bring in the needed money for family support.”
I read this, and I am truly humbled. While yes, there is still much to accomplish to create equality for all, but at least I am able to support myself independently without worry. I am financially sound and am recognized as an expert in my field. What would she have accomplished if she were in my shoes and had the advantages that I complain about? What great things could she have written if she had a job such as mine? Am I doing everything I can to live up to the legacy that she and others laid down?
From Her Journal Entry in May of 1880:
“Thirty girls from Boston University called…Pleasant to see such innocent enthusiasm. Even about so poor a thing as a used up old woman.”
Later in her life she suffered from depression, overwhelmed by her fame. She became discouraged when young girls showed up at the house looking for Jo from Little Women and meeting her instead, a middle-aged woman, broken down from life, illness and worries. Sometimes she would even pretend to be her own housekeeper and tell people she was not home. According to the tour we took at Orchard House, she could vacillate between being highly social and then completely melancholy, using a pillow to signal that she wanted to be left alone.
Gravestone of Louisa May Alcott, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, MA
I wish I could travel back in time and show her all I have accomplished, and all that I still hope to do. Most of all, I want to let her know that I probably could not have done it if she had not paved the way 150 years ago.
Quote on plaque at Northbridge:
“By and by there will come a day of reckoning, and then the tax-paying women of Concord shall not be forgotten I think, will not be left to wait uncalled upon…I devoutly wish that those who so bravely bore their share of that day’s burden without it’s honor, will rally around their own flag again, and following in the footsteps of their forefathers will utter another protest that shall be ‘heard round the world.’”
-Louisa May Alcott on Women’s Suffrage
Plaque at Northbridge, commemorating the battle of Concord
Reference
Louisa May Alcott, Her Life, Letters and Journals, J.S.P. Alcott, Edited by Ednah Dow Cheney; Originally Published in 1889, Applewood Books, Carlisle, MA
Thanks for reading!
I joined the Navy at 18 to escape a small town in the Mojave Desert. A diagnosis of MS disrupted my dreams of becoming a super spy. I made limoncello from my lemons and became an electrical engineer instead. My fascination with live high voltage drew me to Alaska. I came for the job, but stayed for the adventure. I enjoy blogging about my journey as a woman working in STEM, my experiences dealing with everything MS has handed me, and the wonder of the Alaska wilderness. My husband and I have undertaken the task of turning 30 acres of remote land into an off-grid retreat. I write stories about women in STEM who save the day and the hot guys who sometimes help along the way as well as historical fiction about the Klondike Gold Rush. I self-published my first horror novella, The Dark Land, on Amazon in May of 2020. I will release the sequel, The Devil’s Valley, in May of 2021. Both stories are set in the wilderness of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, and draw on the Athabascan “Head Waters Peoples” legends of the Cet’ann, or “The People With Tails”.
The Legend of Alaska’s Headless Ravine is steeped in blood. Its hunger for human flesh never sleeps, even in the deepest cold of winter. Courage, skill and love will be stretched to the limits on the frozen boundaries of The Dark Land.
I have been reading some great books lately about growing your platform as an author and creating a social media base. I realize there is a certain irony, sitting in a remote cabin with no electricity, internet, running water, or indoor plumbing because you like to get away from people and social media; trying to learn about how to build a social media presence and get people to care about writing you’ve been tossing in the corner for years. But I digress. I have been reading and studying, in particular, Jane Friedman’s the Business of Being a Writer, and Rachel Thompson’s 30-Day Book Marketing Challenge. I have always enjoyed writing, and it only occurred to me recently, that I should try to get what I write published. When I decided to give it a try, I knew I needed to learn all I could about what it might take. There’s a lot of great advice and insight out there, but what strikes me as interesting or maybe odd, is the level of resistance to good advice. Especially on selling yourself. In particular, there’s an overarching fear that doing anything other than working on your art is somehow taking precious time away from what could be your masterpiece. This in turn could make you miss your magical window or muse and be shut out forever. I decided to write this blog on my thoughts on what didn’t realize until now was such a huge issue.
Video of phase III blow in the arctic, taken from the front door of camp
I work providing engineering support to an electrical power grid that sits on the Beaufort Sea, distributing power in one of the harshest climates on the planet. I have seen ambient temperatures in excess of -65 degrees with a wind chill of -80, when outside work comes to a complete halt because frost bite occurs in less than five minutes. At the same time, loss of electricity means loss of production which means loss of revenue. A key factor of my job is being able to eloquently state the technical aspects of a problem and why it needs to be solved to a person sitting 800 miles away in Anchorage or even thousands of miles away in London. This person may have no technical background whatsoever and has never donned a pair of steel toed boots or a hard hat in their life, but they control the purse strings. I must convince them that my problem is worth giving money to without losing them in the technical weeds or being so vague that they do not buy into my credibility on the subject matter.
Sunrise and sunset during the arctic winter.
Every time I sit down and create my argument, I refine my writing skills more. Sometimes it is just a smidge, learning to use a better word or phrase to express my full meaning. Sometimes it is learning to when to use better brevity when the situation calls for it. Other times it is learning how to read my audience and tailor my writing specifically to what they want and need from me. Then there are other times, it is admittedly nothing more than getting one more task off my plate, so that I can turn my full attention to what I really enjoy.
Refining my Argument
I can almost hear the can of worms crack open with a loud hiss as I write this, but I am going to give it a go. One of the things that we as women are often accused of in our writing and I will openly and freely admit that I am guilty of: rambling. In technical writing and making presentations to someone whom you are trying to convince to give you money for a problem, this can be detrimental. Think about it, when you are pitching your book, they want it short and sweet. It took me a long time to get to the point of learning how to get to the point, and just deliver the message. I can thank some great mentors for helping me refine my speech and my writing, so that eyes did not keep glazing over when I started to talk. My presentations became more effective, my technical papers and emails clearer and concise. I got what I wanted professionally and personally with far more ease. I was taken seriously as an engineer. I do my best to provide this same type of guidance to the engineers I currently mentor, who most of the time, hate writing.
Targeting your Audience
I am a geek. My husband is a geek. Get the two of us together, and we can sit for hours talking about our respective career fields. His career field is Corrosion and Ultra-sonics, specializing in Non-destructive testing. I have a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering with a Masters in Power Systems. Believe it or not, there is incredible overlap between the two fields due to the underlying principles of physics and magnetics. Get the two of us together and we can geek out for hours about hysteresis and ferro resonance in different materials. In fact, this sums up our first date. Right now, some of you are probably thinking, nerd, cough, nerd. And you’re not wrong. I embrace it proudly, and I thoroughly enjoy it. What’s the inherent problem with getting too technical? People outside your discipline don’t get it. And if you need them to understand it, at least enough to help fix a problem, you had better learn to write and speak in a way that will make them care. That is something both my fiction writing and my blog helps refine my technical writing. It is a constant process of improving my language skills and helping people to understand more about what I do and how electricity and energy are produced and distributed.
Every time I put my pen to paper or begin to type on this keyboard the feedback loop in my brain picks up, and my writing improves a little more. This is an undervalued area of the writing process that should get a lot more credit than it does. Sure, if you are blogging or twittering just to avoid writing your novel or magazine article, that’s a whole separate issue.
Thanks for reading, I would love to hear your thoughts.
Here is an Excerpt from a story I finished some time ago:
“So, what do you think, princess? Can you fix it?” he asked with a laugh.
Silver eyes flashed as she paused in her work. “Of course I can. This is easy. But why do you call me a princess? Princesses in the books at the library wear big dresses and go to dances and do magic. I’ve never worn a dress in my life.” He laughed out loud at her honesty. She was quite the little character.
“Maybe princesses do more than wear dresses, little one. And maybe you’re doing a different kind of magic right now.” She shrugged in response and focused on her task. Before too long, she began to pepper him with questions about his car.
“I’ve never gotten to work on such a nice car before, though Mr. Hahn has lots of books about cool cars in his shop. How long have you had it?”
“Not too long princess. I had a 907 before this one.” He said with a smile, not sure if she would know what that was.
“You had a 907 before this one? Why did you get rid of it? That was a really nice Porsche. I read in Mr. Han’s magazines that they only made like, 103 of those.” She asked, silver eyes wide as leaned toward him like an inquisitive little bird.
He frowned. He did not know how to explain it to such an innocent little girl. He decided to just lie. “I was driving too fast and I wrecked it. So, I had to get a new one,” he said simply.
She paused in her work and scrutinized him with her piercing eyes. She blinked those long, thick lashes a few times and scrunched her perfectly arched dark eyebrows together, and without saying a word, he realized the astute little girl knew he was not telling the truth. Instead of calling him on it, she asked.
“Why were you driving too fast?”
“I was trying to get away from some really bad people.”
“But when you crashed, didn’t they catch you?” she asked, cocking her head to one side, gazing directly at him. He smiled to himself, once more reminded of an innocent little bird.
“Almost. I was able to hide until they went away.”
She nodded and then resumed her questioning, still gazing at him. “Why were bad people chasing you?”
He decided to be a little more direct. He leaned toward her. She mimicked him, leaning close, thick dark lashes blinking, silver eyes wide and curious. He was close enough that he could detect the scent of black licorice on her breath. He definitely could tell now that most of dirt on her face was faded bruises, at least on her cheeks. But her skin underneath the dirt and bruises was soft and fair, otherwise flawless on her innocent heart-shaped face. He could not help but think to himself she would be a pretty woman one day. He was in turn curious to see her response. He felt wicked, almost like a villain in a fairy tale. He lowered his voice and said, “Maybe because I’m bad too, and I did something bad.”
She gave him another sharp look, but she did not pull back. “You don’t look like a bad man. Not like the guys my mom hangs out with,” she stated bluntly.
He threw back his head and laughed out loud. He was tempted to reach out and touch this innocent, honest little girl. He got the impression she would not take it well, she would probably burn him with that hot iron.
“Oh princess, don’t judge people by how they look. It will get you into trouble someday.”
She bristled at his teasing, her full, pink, licorice-stained lips pursed into a frown. “I don’t,” she retorted stubbornly, “But you don’t seem like the guys my mom hangs out with. And they are bad. They do bad things. Gross things,” she said assertively with a small shiver and then sat back and soldered a wire.
I have no doubt about that. He thought to himself. Who knows what this little girl has seen? “Princess, maybe there is more than one way to be bad.” Who would have thought he would be sitting in a small desert town on a Sunday afternoon having a philosophical conversation with a little girl about good and bad? It made him laugh harder. He was beginning to wonder if he had slipped into another dimension.
“Can I ask you a question?” she asked suddenly staring down at the part she was working on. It looked as if she were almost done working on it. He was impressed by how fast she wired it back together.
He laughed again, “You mean, in addition to all of the other questions you’ve already asked me princess?”
“No, I have a serious question this time,” she said. She reached for some of the wires that she had pulled off the old wiring harness. They were lying in a pile on the table, fluttering a little in the afternoon breeze.
Unsure where this peculiar little girl was going with the conversation, he replied, “Sure princess, ask whatever you would like.”
“Did one of those bad people put acid on your wires?”
