Russia: Hard to Go, Hard to Stay, Harder to Come Home to a Drunken Cat Sitter

Returning home from Russia yesterday I found that a 2nd cousin had died and that my cat sitter had drunk every drop of alcohol in my apartment, used up all the toilet paper, and left broken glass both in the bathroom and in the bedroom. The fact that I left Russia no longer on speaking terms with my work supervisor (who was, it turned out, a terrible person to travel with in Russia) didn't help matters. Also, my apartment being the cramped thing it is in the crummy neighborhood where it is doesn't help. One very GOOD thing is that the stripey girl cat, my own private predator, was happily stoned on cat nip when I came home, making the make-up game all too easy.

Never mind that the conference I was at was a total success, and the two major campaigns I've been working on have had great breakthroughs in the last week, my supervisor was just miserable. I was clearly working on her last nerve, being as happy as I was. Buying a bunch of Russian duck calls at a hunting store (just wait until my family gets these for Christmas-- I hope they know what to do with all the Russian ducks) and then trying them all out in the restaurant where we were having lunch on our last day probably snapped her last thread of control. So, she made sure to put me in my place before we all got in the van to go to the airport.

I can't help it that being in Russia makes me happy. I don't know why she- being dedicated as she is (to the point of being at a dead-run on the way to Burn Out City) to the country- was so miserable there! My two theories are that she was actually happy and she just shows her happiness by being miserable, or that she is actually a much more miserable person and this was her being happy.

So back to my amazing cat sitter, who must have taken all the liquor to the bathroom and drank while sitting on the toilet for ten days (how does one woman use up 4 rolls and a box of tissues in ten days!?). I asked her about one of the (full) bottles she drank and threw away-- a balzam that was a rare gift from a friend-- my last violin teacher, back in Novgorod, Russia-- and she simply said that if I hadn't wanted her to drink it I should have told her not to. I really do wonder if this woman has any idea that she even has a drinking problem, I mean, that she- who only eats organic and works as in the healing profession- drinks like a sailor, a Russian sailor, a Russian sailor with a particularly bad drinking problem. In ten days she drank a nearly full (not small) bottle of gin, whisky, two bottles of absinthe, a full bottle of Russian balzam, an unopened bottle of wine and bottle of champagne-- and some more alcohol she had bought herself when my stash was running low. I almost want to ask her-- what was wrong with the sherry? She only drank it half down. It was perfectly good sherry. And the sweet vermouth she hardly touched at all. If anyone is wondering, her name is Stacy Lininger, CMT, and she is a good cat sitter if you don't mind the massive number of empty liquor bottles and the broken glass in places where you walk barefoot.

Luckily I'm NOT a drinker (most of the bottles Stacy Lininger, CMT, emptied were gifts that I kept for special occasions), and I have a good pair of slippers to protect me from the glass, so this doesn't impair my ability to relax. I'm taking a sick day to regroup and think about my poor cousin Bill. He was a long-time sufferer of MS - but it's funny how the chronically ill surprise you when they die. You just think they can go on forever, since they've already survived so much. He was a few hours older than my father, and so they were childhood playmates and very fond of eachother. Bill made a lot of mistakes in his life, but as my father said, he didn't make these problems anyone else's. Well, unless you count his wife and son, but he really did try to do ok by them, as sick as he became. Rest in peace, Bill. Or, now that you have your legs and arms back, may you party very hearty and then rest in peace. Sleep very well.

Back to my time in Russia. This was an amazing trip where the organization where I work gathered leaders from 30 different important Far East/ Siberian environmental organizations (plus Greenpeace and WWF since they have programs out there) in the very deep woods near the Sea of Japan to discuss the coming year of projects and campaigns. It was the seventh such conference, and it met for about six days, a longer time than the conference had ever extended. Since the women's cabin (the damskaya obitel we called it - the convent) was up a muddy hilly trail we all had to try to stay sober, but the men really whooped it up. Some started the day with beer and ended the day hardly able to sing the sad songs and cry about the things Russians like to drunkenly cry about. But other than the partying, the working groups really gained common ground, and the new people seemed to really connect with the older members of the coalition, and the slimy WWF guy left early. A success all around.

And then there were the tigers. The area where we were-- Lazovsky reserve in the Primorye region- is one of the preserves where about 450 Siberian tigers still roam. The head organizer of the camp where we were staying was a miraculous survivor of a tiger attack - two short years ago- where he nearly lost his leg and then all but died lying in the snow for two days while they tried to organize a rescue using a private helicopter (the emergency ones could only be used at decree of the administration heads who were off drinking with some Japanese businessmen). He had a lovely singing voice. And he seemed to stay sober enough to use it. And to keep an eye out for tigers.

Now, keep in mind the fact that we ladies had to cross a couple of streams (hopping on rocks and thin planks) and climb a steep hill at night to get to our cabin. Through an unlit stretch of woods. Then we had as our protector the young shepherd Jack (Russian: "Djeck") who was on a fairly short and fairly stout chain, i.e. a nice appetizer before hitting the damskaya obitel for lunch.

Also keep in mind that the young men running the place were unable to design the cabin to make sure heat circulated to the upstairs room. The men apparently don't need heat. So the ladies upstairs in the obitel were freezing the first few nights until they got loud enough to get the men to stoke the fire in the bottom floor early enough and hot enough to * heat the bricks that made up one part of one wall in their room *. That was all they had for heat. So, that done, the ladies (including me) on the bottom floor had to leave ALL the doors and ALL the windows as WIDE open as possible ALL night in order to breathe let alone fitfully sleep. So, warm sweaty ladies in a blanket, all ready for the evening tiger buffet. One had to just not think about it. Some of us simply didn't go to the outhouse after dark. I relied on my good luck, and managed to see more stars in one sky than modern humans almost ever see. I liked to imagine the tigers were too distracted by the brightness of the stars, making up tiger constellations, to pay attention to the little fleshy lady-niblets running around.

Then there was the banya. The banya. Ah the banya. It was three days old and the sap was still seeping out of the fresh pine boards. The men built it specifically for us. Such gentlemen. I've never bathed in a three-day-old banya-- the pine scent mixing with the birch switches (used to slough off old skin) will be with me for a while. Then there is the matter of handsome Sergei the tiger-mauling-survivor taking one of our handsomest Slavic beauties into the banya one afternoon for a little R&R. It honestly made the banya seem more magic-- like a healing house and a bathing house and a pleasure house all at once. A place of solace in a terribly broad swath of taiga.

One late afternoon we went to the beach. It was our last evening out in the taiga by the Sea of Japan. We saw the fog rolling in just like it does here in California. Just like a Californian I jumped into the surf. The beach was soft with small pebbles and the undertow was like a big paw pulling me down-- I had to call out to get pulled out by my arms. Not long after I'd recovered, someone cried out and we all grabbed our digital cameras and came running. Tiger tracks. The tracks couldn't have been more than a matter of hours old. A set of just-as-fresh wild goat tracks were next to the tiger's. After that I kept one eye on the ferocious undertow in the deep bay to my one side and the other eye on the steep forested hill on my other side... at that point some ladies just went and waited in the cars. One particularly drunken activist man-- from Chukotka, that Russian side of the Bering land bridge-- went and taunted the surf by trying to stand in the waves. I just found a rocky perch and amused myself wondering how we could get him out if he finally went under. He went down on his knees with almost every wave but he never got tired of the game. So it is with our activists, and why they might just succeed in protecting that good water and those wild tigers...