First Travels

Neither Out Far Nor In Deep



Going to the beach at the end of our block was the place I traveled to most often as a child. That short trip allowed me to leave our overcrowded home and see the limitless horizon. From the age of six or seven we were able to go outdoors to play anywhere we could get to safely by foot or bike. I remember getting up early on sunny Saturdays, heading to the ocean by bike, riding to where the concrete dead-ended into beach plum and rosehips. I would drop the bike into the sand and walk up to the top of the dunes to check the waves. Even though I was never a surfer, I learned to notice what made good prospects, waves a decent height with a long clean roll, so that I could report back to whomever might need to know. If I was going back to the house for breakfast, I might meet a fellow early riser walking his dog who would ask, “How are the waves?” “Pretty choppy and broken up,” I’d say, instead of hello.

The beach was a place where I could walk all day if I wanted, although my feet would start to complain after a couple of miles of sand. Sometimes a group of us would travel too far along the edge, around jetty after jetty, to walk back. Then we would decide whose parent might be most willing to come rescue us and use one of the payphones on the boardwalk or in any close fast food shack to beg for a pick-up.

Although we lived on an island, I never felt like there was a limit to exploring and the ocean offered new possibilities of treasures on each stroll. Even the way the tide changed the texture of the beach would be different each day. A low tide might create a stretch of hard sand, great for running or drawing elaborate games of hopscotch. A high tide washing up against the soft sand, creating a little cliffs that would make walking tough, might offer the perfect timing to play a favorite sand castle game, where we tried to defend a walled city against a rising tide. We would imagine that we were protecting New York City and it was up to us to keep the millions from drowning. Inevitably, the water always won, but the struggle was as exciting as any disaster movie we imitated.

Maybe growing up with the Atlantic Ocean at the end of the street instilled my need to go outside in order to see what is inside. Going over the dunes to check the waves is a way to see which way my own tide is pulling and what treasures have come ashore.

Looking Backwards

Wind and Waves Redux (for Clea)

I almost died, she said,
I didn’t realize how bad it was
until I read about the accident in the paper
and talked to a surgeon who talked to my surgeon.

Along a terrible stretch of road
with rain pouring down,
nothing we could have done
about the other car crossing toward us.

I’m pretty tough
but metal propelled by combustion
tears deep into the complicated
anatomy of self,

With closed eyes, I still see the collision
but feel lucky, even that first night
pressing a button for painkiller
from a turned off machine.

My spleen was left in the hospital
and broken ribs scraped
against my lungs, in months
of aching recovery.

But I’m back again on this road
practicing each moment
as if the whole song of my life
plays in the space between each breath.

May 1, 2010

Fixing the Damage

Fence Pull

April is the greenest month
in close cupped hills holding the John Day river
No wonder the wilderness area is called Spring Basin.
They said is was bare dirt up here when
cattle ran, but after ten years bunchgrass
is knee high, nestling lilies.

We are here to undo our scarring of the land,
with stake puller, wire cutters and pliers
we follow each other up the ridge, each with a job,
first cutting the twisted spacers holding the strands apart
then unbending the clips attaching wire to post, then levering
the stake, and finally rolling the wire into tidy wreaths of metal thorns.

The debris is left in piles, location saved
by GPS for future removal.
The work is hard on our slack city muscles,
and we nod to the grit of previous cowboys
determined to disect undulating geography
into squares of forage.

But when we remove the mile of fence
and hike the distance back
its huge absence
takes our breath away.

4/27/10

Camping in the Rain

The rain is a strong mizzle in Lincoln City and my plan is to camp at Devil’s Lake park, right in town, so I’m biding my time in a Thai restaurant, hoping to wait out the precipitation. I order food and a beer, but it is difficult to eat the fiery hot food slowly so I am ready to leave, leftovers in hand, in less than an hour.

It’s hard to stick to the camping resolution with motels all around, but I am here to investigate ecobiography at Sitka and I feel I should try and enter the ecology of place for this exercise. So I go to the campground and check in and find my space which is soggy and ringed with skunk cabbage. I walk around to locate the bathrooms, and pass a man taking the ritual campground stroll, protected against the elements in full hunting cammo gear.

“When’s this rain going to end?” I ask.
“I heard it will be nice by Saturday,” he says grinning.
“I can’t wait that long!” I whine.

I go back to my car and sit and listen to the radio and play tunes on my recorder, just the same as if I was home. The windows fog up and it keeps raining. The campground is only about two-thirds full, but this weekend is Fourth of July and I know there will be no vacancy by Friday night. I wonder why camping is so attractive even as my neighbors all huddle in their campers, tents or yurts, far more cramped than in their own homes. We do not like to interact with nature when it is wet. All our fantasies of outdoor involve sunshine and dry ground, even on the coast where both are rare.

I go ahead and put up the tent, committing myself finally to this insistence on matching words to deeds. I decide to set up on the asphalt driveway, figuring that will be my best bet to stay dry. I can’t stake the tent corners but I can stake the guy lines into the dirt and even tie one directly to the grill of the car. By the time I get the tent up the rain has stopped, though the trees still drip into the puddles. So I walk out to the docks that poke into Devils Lake. The clouds are barely off the water, but the air is mild. Leaves are unburdening themselves of heavy drops of rain and springing back with little rustlings, and a robin, head and feet dark with wet feathers, hunts a last bit of dinner at the lake edge. Two pairs of fishermen head towards me, poles and beer in hand, ready to enjoy the last hour of daylight. One of them is the guy in cammo.

“Hey, it stopped raining!” he says, recognizing me.

I smile and agree, and go back to my site, readying for what will be a long night, punctuated by loud showers of furious raindrops on the fly. But I am dry and snug in modern inventions, slightly more connected to the real world than I would be in town, but a long way from the exuberant shine of skunk cabbage, succulent in the mud.

The next day the rain eventually stops, as we talk uncertainly about how to write where we are. We venture out to the Salmon River estuary where high tide is pushing ocean up river, salt and fresh mingling irrevocably. Sparrows in the blooming blackberries call insistently to each other, a green teasel is sharpening leaf into summer thorn, and a seagull lands beak first in pursuit of a piece of swimming food. Every part of the scene depends on another. We sit down and survey each item of landscape, writing ourselves into the story of right now, from a history of other places, hoping to find a niche of tomorrow.