1985 - Jared does not progress; Linda gets a “real” midwife job; Alaska, calving glaciers & muskeg mosquitos; Caribbean Queen of Limbo
Click on the arrows below to open each topic
Linda searched Buncombe County for a place they could call their own, their first self-bought home after the dome. On a forested ridgetop adjoining the Blue Ridge in Weaverville, she found it.
While Grandma cared for the kids Linda and Paul escaped once to St. John in the Virgin Islands. Camping of course, strictly low budget.
The cafeteria in the campground had two Jamaican women of impressive size and bulk, described by their work partner (misogynous as it was, but hilarious to Linda despite her women’s lib convictions) as “The Tit Sisters”. Decades later when they moved to Conifer, Linda transmogrified the socially inappropriate term to perhaps a less offensive one, anointing with that descriptor two rock-topped mini-peaks among the other forested mounts they saw from their porch.
What in those days the tourists described as Hurricane Point on the eastern tip of Saint John’s became one highlight of their trip. At the bar-restaurant, Linda perhaps uncharacteristically (she wasn’t much for public display after her majorette days) entered the limbo competition, bending and beating out all comers, a champion and “Queen” by title and in Paul’s heart.
That time together rekindled the romantic vibes that their madcap life, professions, and children had seemed to diminish. Reinvigorated, they dove back into the reality they sought to build.
They loved Alaska. Any chance to get back there they’d “beg, borrow, or steal”. After internship, came electives. To gain professional competence, yes, but as much for family and frontier, Linda enthusiastically blessed him finagling an orthopedic rotation in Anchorage at the Indian Health Service hospital.
They stayed in a house above the Eagle River, owned by family on vacation. Watching moose and black bear every day, eagles overhead and snowcap peaks all around, they seriously thought of moving there, and did eventually, but to Juneau.
A friend from residency spent summers fishing in Alaska before his training years, building a small log cabin island deep in the muskegs and pine of Kenai. He never finished it. They SO identified with the endeavor from their Esmont cabin days that they boated to the uninhabited island off Homer to see it. Mosquitoes were so thick that had to drape Noah and themselves in double mosquito netting just to use the outhouse. So thick clouds of them grounded small aircraft. They didn’t hike much, and it wasn’t particularly an enjoyable experience overall. But they were seeing the “real” Alaska.
It wasn’t all mega-mile drives and professional tasks – Linda with her immediately engaging persona and joie de vivre delved deep into mountain and folk culture, sharing that delight with her husband, snagging him when not on-call to square dancing weekly at the “Old Farmers Ball,” at local bluegrass concerts, then at the multi-day Black Mountain Folk Festival. Despite the strains and stresses, it was a magical time for them all.