When someone on the radio mentioned Dr. Jerri Nielsen, I smiled and thought, “What’s she up to now?”

I didn’t expect her to die. Not our indomitable doctor hero of the South Pole, whose saga in 1999 from diagnosing her own breast cancer to being airlifted in a whiteout and 60 degrees below zero was more riveting than any of today’s crop of reality shows.

You might not have remembered Jerri’s name but you’d never forget that story.
Doctor at Antarctic research station finds lump and does her own biopsy, drafting her polar colleagues to be her surgical team. An ironworker held the syringe. A machinist helped with her IV, a welder assisted with her chemotherapy and medical advice came via email and teleconference from a surgeon in Indiana.

I met Jerri Nielsen in Santa Rosa when she spoke at a breast cancer seminar. By then she had written her book “Ice Bound” and was looking forward to being played by Susan Sarandon in the movie version. She’d been traveling the country raising awareness and money for breast cancer programs and talked about the amazing club of women she met. Women with breast cancer who did not suffer in silence. Not a victim among them. She called them Kick-Butt women.

I asked Jerri back then what people found most interesting about her story.
“It’s probably because I’m just like anybody, a middle-aged, overweight lady going on an adventure,” she said. Although not everyone’s idea of adventure would be to work in what Jerri called “the highest, driest, coldest, windiest and emptiest place on earth.”

Not a victim among them

Yet, Jerri Nielsen made deciding to leave her hospital job in Ohio to live on the ice sound like a fun idea. She took to it, learning to love the raw beauty of the place and becoming part of a caring, sweet eccentric community of scientists and crew.

I think about her now. Had someone told her she was going to get cancer at age 47 she might have never left Ohio. The cancer would still have come but Jerri would have missed her big adventure. And we would have missed her.

During her stateside tour she said she wanted to return to Antarctica and show it off to her mother. According to the obituaries she did return several times to her highest, coldest place on earth. She continued practicing medicine and speaking. She married a a fellow adventurer, a man she’d met while traveling in the jungle and had become Jerri Nielsen Fitzgerald. The cancer, which had gone into remission, roared back four years ago. She died at a too-young 57.

News of Jerri’s death was quickly upstaged by celebrity obits in that same week. If famous deaths come in threes, hers was knocked down the list by Johnny Carson’s sidekick, an actress in a red bathing suit and the King of Pop.

They were gifted artists and entertainers. Jerri was a person who might never had become known had her extraordinary situation not turned her into an ambassador of courage and chutzpah. She reminded us to get those mammograms, do self exams and push for better detection. Jerri often made the point that six months before she discovered her lump she’d had a clear mammogram.

She was an everyday woman who spoke to people like my young friend in her late 20s who’s getting a double mastectomy she hopes will prevent the disease that killed her relatives. And to my old friend who developed cancer in both breasts in her 60s and is alive and healthy in her 90s.

Definitely kick-butt women.

“Where are you taking those good black jeans,” asked my husband as he checked out the pile of clothes at the front door. They’re too short in the waist and too belled in the bottom, I explained. And these hiking boots kill my feet. And the mango colored shirt? Well, we agree that was a regrettable purchase.

The occasion was a clothes swap at a friend’s backyard in Forestville. The basics of the swap are pretty simple. All the guests bring items from their own closets that they’re ready to give up. The clothes are not tattered or hopelessly outdated. You might admire them on a friend, just not on yourself anymore. If ever.

I don’t know the origin of the clothes swap but it may have started in the pioneer days when women had to make do with one dress all the way from New Jersey to California and somewhere in western Kansas one yelled out “I’m so sick of this rag,” prompting the woman in the next wagon to yell out, “I’ll take it” and with that, one ripped off her gray muslin and the other her yellow calico and they swapped.

By the time everyone got to Sacramento the word had spread and someone had a party in her backyard and all the women got silly and tried on each other’s clothes and had something to drink and came home with a brand new look. When their husbands inquired, “Where did you get that?” they could say, “This old thing?”

It’s the best kind of shopping. You are surrounded by personal advisors who won’t hesitate to urge you to “take it, you can wear it with jeans.” Or to frown and say, “leave it.” It costs nothing. You’re recycling. And you might make a score. Like I did with my new pencil skirt that can go with sandals or boots and according to observers makes me look tall. And which my friend Maureen is ever so grateful to never wear again.

What’s left at the end of the day gets taken to the local hospice thrift store, so even though you haven’t spent any money you do end up stimulating the economy.

It’s the best kind of shopping.

You would not mistake this scene for a garden party in spite of the Jamaican music, wine and food and women spilling out of their underwires. On the clothesline by the garage were coats, pantsuits and near-formal dresses suitable for fund-raisers. Along the deck was a lineup of shoes - mother-of-the-bride wedding sandals, running shoes bought online but never worn and a dreamy pair of cowboy boots that no amount of straining and pushing were going to fit a size 9.

On the blanket next to the vegetable garden was a pile of summer sweaters where a couple of teachers held forth on the California budget. Tank tops and T-shirts stretched out on a blanket by the pool where some of us wished for a return to shoulder pads. There wasn’t much action at the lingerie table except for a tasty discussion over whether nightgowns or T-shirts are better for sleeping but dont’ do much for your sex life.

The clothes swap is such a good idea I don’t know why men don’t try it. They wouldn’t need hardly as many tables. Maybe one for khaki pants, one for button down shirts, one for those baggy shirts with pictures of surfboards and martini glasses. Here’s an image: a bunch of men walking around in skivvies and black socks asking if plum goes with their hair color.

My sister, who lives in New England and who supplies clams and lobsters when I visit, expects oysters at this end of the country.

We are familiar with each other’s regional delicacies and neighborhood attractions from all the years we’ve been traveling between coasts. Some of our best visits are when we get together and do things on a whim, on the cheap and as local as possible. This concept of playing tourist in your own backyard, known as the stay-cation, is not new to us. We take turns at it.

The weather forecast for the week was moody and indecisive, typical for Northern California in June but a soggy surprise for even a regular visitor, especially a New Englander who doesn’t consider fleece vests and socks necessary summer wear.

We decided to ignore the weather and head for Tomales Bay. Taking the back roads, up and over Sonoma and Marin farmland and hills, the route presents spectacular vistas that are pretty routine to me, which is why you want a non-local along, to remind you where you live and to ooh and ahh over cows and egrets and sudden outcropping of poppies.

This concept of the stay-cation is not new to us.

I feel the same in her world. On the short drive from her house to the beach, I go wild over stone fences, corn stands and salt marshes. When I’m back there I always need to stop at one of the funky old fish shacks you see sitting on the water in most coastal towns, un-fancy places where you can grab a plate of fried clams or haddock and take in that raw briny sea air which to me is perfume.

Why, I always whine, can’t California have our own funky fish places? The choice is either a white linen sit-down restaurant with large menus or an oyster farm where you buy a bag of raw ones to take home and grill. But on this day driving along Tomales Bay my keen-eyed sister spotted a store in the tiny town of Marshall with a sign promising cold beer and barbecued oysters. We sat on the water’s edge at a table made from a board across two barrels, slurped a dozen garlicky beauties, mopped up the juice with slabs of sourdough and watched Point Reyes pop out of the fog. A vacation high-five.

There were others. Another night we drove up the road to Healdsburg for outdoor burgers and wine followed by sweet, live jazz. Because my sister was coming I thought ahead and ordered tickets for the Healdsburg Jazz Festival, something I tend to often regrettably let slip until it’s long over. At the Sebastopol farmers market we ate tamales for breakfast and my sister bagged up rhubarb and strawberries to make a pie. She rolled out the crust – she has the pie gene, not me – and we talked about our grandmother and her rhubarb patch in Pennsylvania and our dad’s strawberry garden in Connecticut.

A stay-cation is not as exotic as going to Venice or Barcelona. People don’t listen dreamily to your story about how you stayed home and drank coffee for half the morning, then walked downtown to the book store, scored a blue sweater on sale and bought an ice cream cone.

I know that eventually I will get the yearning to go some place where I need a passport and a dictionary. When a friend said she was taking her family to France this summer, I felt a twinge of Frequent Flyer envy.

Yet, for now, the recession has made backyard vacations the chic alternative, and I’m thinking I should soon plan another one. Maybe a place where the sun comes up over the ocean and there’s a bucket of steamers and a free bed waiting.

Photo from Marshall Store

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