Fern Lake

Travelling Cheese

2012-02-09T23:22:00.000-08:00

"Who Moved My Cheese" was published in 1998 and at the timewas considered a brilliant tool for coping with change. You don't hear much about that book anymore, but I need to order it from the library, to make sure it doesn't have a secret I can use. Ever since being told I was losing my job, I have been in a state of disbelief and controlled euphoria. I really could use a change. Maybe not one that takes away all my money, but if that is the one that is given to me, I should make the most of it. Instead, people keep worrying about health insurance for me. "What about it?" I ask grumpily, "I'm not sick, have never been sick, why must I assume the worst?" For some reason, this aspect of unemployment really irritates me. Should I really devote time and worry time, over whether I might get sick and be forced to pay for, or even worse not be able to pay for, feeling awful, suffering and dying? Is physical pain and suffering less painful if you are insured?

Regardless of the stupid health care dilemma, which I blame 100% on the Republican party, I do suffer from the retrospective of my life that is playing in all the cinemas of my mind. When facing a big change, suddenly everything that came before this moment threatens to coalesce into a big fat evaluation of my life. "So this is where you end up, thirty years out of law school? One lousy job, where you made lousy money, after hundreds of poor people pass through your door, just as poor going in as coming out, and then they fire you."

But the actual truth is that I don't feel that bad. Sure I'll miss the swimming pool in the town where I work, and I'll miss my co-workers, with their cameraderie as we face an impossible task each day: how to make a difference. It must be like fighting the war in Afghanistan, only without the possibility of being blown up by a bomb. However, after the shock of not going to work wears off, I think I will be able to adjust. At the very least, there will be the job search to structure my days. Then there will be the entire of book of other stuff I have always wanted to do, but never gave myself the time to do. If it turns out that that my many hobbies and interests cannot sustain me and unemployment and savings run out, then I will need to find a job, any job. Until then, I will allow myself to just be.

The Sky is Falling

2012-01-11T23:43:00.000-08:00

It has been more than a month since my last post. In the meantime, my mundane world has altered. Although the details are important to me, the fact is, only change is interesting and meaningful, stasis is about nothing. So why do we so resist change? Why, even when someone forces upon us the very change we seek, do we recoil against it?

These are the questions I have asked repeatedly, since I was told that my job of the last 29 years is about to be eliminated. It happened suddenly and nonsensically, surprising and angering. And even though my job has many positives, it has also been very frustrating and repetitive over the years. Yet fear of the unknown has kept me here, year after year.

So now I am thrust into the next phase of my life, and yet, I cannot help but grasp at the straws of remaining the same. There is a chance the downsize may happen some different way, so I focus on that possibility for awhile longer. There is a chance a different position may be offered, so I hope for that. However, the better part of me knows I should move over into the new realm of "Life After Legal Aid," and leave the what-ifs behind. I think I had to write this to make my way over here.

So much of my job is about helping people find palatable solutions to serious problems. Usually I assist them in getting to the next phase of their lives, and they thank me. Why then, have I learned so little about making transitions in my own life? I guess I will try and become my own client for the change that will come. Here we go.

Thoughts Over A Bowl A Polenta

2011-12-08T22:17:00.001-08:00

This post starts with nothing in mind whatsoever. Can I make something out of nothing?

This week has been spent alone, not counting going to work and a music rehearsal. By which I mean, my partner, Robert, has been off to the coast pursuing his livelihood and I have been left in the house by myself. This happens so rarely, that I am both euphoric and at loose ends. Euphoria has been expressed through the unrestrained oddity of my diet. Finally, I get to eat anything I want. Which means I simply scrounge for whatever is there, no matter how various. Tonight, I made pudding with half, half-and-half, and half, rice milk. It was weird but I couldn't tell if it was the rice milk or the fact that I burned the bottom of the pan. Of course, I ate some anyway. My food goal is to prove that I can eat happily on whatever the cupboard and fridge provide. Like most Americans, we tend to stockpile food., even though we are always going to the grocery store. The other part of dinner was polenta, to use up the carton of chicken stock I opened for my quinoa vegetable stew two nights before, that included every vegetable in the fridge except the lettuce. I call it practicing for poverty.

If I get nothing else out of my career of taking care of the legal problems of the poor, at least I have a clue how to survive on the bottom rungs of society, should I ever fall down the pinnacle of success I have managed to achieve. I also know not to fear such a fall from grace, as I have learned that only addiction or mental illness or illegality of status could send you to the streets. Despite the tales of woe that are touted as proof of our terrible economy, our country is not yet at the point of letting people starve or freeze to death. I say this only to remember that our version of misfortune is quite a bit better than many parts of the world.

The one thing that marks my poor clients as different from my friends and acquaintances, is the raw emotion they readily express. Although I thrill to the slogan of the "Occupy" movement that "We are the 99%," there is a big difference between the bottom 10% and the 90th percentile. The thing about this country is that we have a good idea of how the rich live, and we are damn mad we don't have some of that. The poorer you are, the madder and sadder you are about it. So I hear a lot of emotions and I like that part of my job. This may be a twisted appreciation, but I admire those who are in touch with and express their feelings. It is so straightforward. But I'm also glad that I don't have all those strong feelings myself, at least not over the same things.

Spending the week alone has also led to more talking to myself, which then finally, has led to this little bit of writing, which is all good. But I'm ready for company

(Random photos from today)

Everywhere Looks Good From Here

2011-11-16T23:46:00.000-08:00

Whenever I go out in the country I imagine how nice it would be to live there. I stare intently at the landscape and wish I could look at the view from the window of a house right here, or over there. This leads to perpetual house hunting of the vaguest nature. I am lucky to have a friend who is a realtor and tolerates my temporary enthusiasms, because inevitably when she talks about getting pre-approved for a loan, or checking with the planning department about whether there are building restrictions, my dream house starts looking less like heaven on earth and more like a series of decisions that depend on comparing facts and figures. Then my interest wanes until the next trip out of town.

It has been suggested that my behavior means that I don't want to live in the city and I am desperate to relocate anywhere that doesn't involve so many sidewalks, stoplights and coffee shops. But I actually like the busy metropolis with all the possibilities for amusement. It's just that when I see real land stripped and bare of human accoutrements, I just want to lie down and be absorbed into the scenery. I think I sang 'This Land Is Your Land" one too many times as a child.

Luckily, we do find ways to get out where nature predominates. Last weekend we went hiking along Siouxon Creek in Washington, about sixty miles from Portland. The forest was covered with thick moss and popping mushrooms everywhere, and it embodied everything the northwest climate is famous for. I looked at that moss and wanted to bed down in its softness. What a place this earth is!

Here's a poem I wrote about this place, more than ten years ago. Luckily, it hasn't changed.

Siouxon Creek

Down in hemlock, cedar, fern
everything is green, even air is algal,
the creek a punch of moss
champagne and liquor of leaf.
Mist swags treetops, a wreath of droplets
glazing needles, dripping into
effervescing waterfalls.
Tall snags carve totem poles
to gods of decay, before toppling
into bryophytic carpet.

I drive a gauntlet of clearcuts and hunters
to get here, and grumble over mountain
bike prints I tamp down on the trail,
but bathed in emerald light
discontent spills away,
within this narrow watershed of life.

Accomplishments

2011-10-18T22:07:00.000-07:00

When I was a budding feminist, I researched and wrote a paper about female education in the old old days. I think I read one book and summarized the major tenets; which were that in the 1800's (and possibly 1700's), girls' education needn't go further than the basics of reading and writing and a little math, as long as they also gather a few "accomplishments" to show off to suitors. These seemed to center around music and needlework, and maybe a little riding.

This book must have been instrumental in my formation, because even though I managed to complete a fair number of years of serious education, I have also tried to keep up on a flurry of hobbies and talents to impress the judges. Way after the competition is over, I am still practicing my music, art, and sundry athletic pursuits, as if I might audition at any time in a competition for the best all-round girl.

Thus, I have a strange combination of goal directed behavior, sabotaged by a simultaneous need to cover all bases. The goal fixation was apparent in our recent trip to Kings Canyon National Park. Planning from afar, we mapped a five day backpack trip that would take us into the High Sierras. However, before we even arrived, the weather report was forecasting a serious chance of snow in the middle of the trip's timeline. Despite this chill, I refused to accept that the weather report would turn out correct so we went ahead with our plans. Unfortunately, the predictions came to pass and we were forced to beat a hasty retreat, hiking out sixteen miles in one day to beat the snow. From then on we sheltered in the fancy lodge at Sequoia and contented ourselves with day hikes. But still, I regret we didn't complete our journey as planned. I hate to give up, even as I hedge all my bets.

Dark Clouds

2011-09-18T00:06:00.000-07:00

Although the internet gives us the ability to know virtually anything we want, I stay away from specific areas where I don't think I can handle the information. I am afraid that if I knew the true state of certain things, I couldn't go on making my little plans, celebrating my little successes. Instead, I would be paralyzed with depression or consumed by anger. Those unknown facts are sensed to be things that I have very little chance of changing, yet are horrible. One of those subject areas for me is "fracking."

Fracking is not a clever way of writing the other "f-word." It is shorthand for a terrible way we are tearing up this country in a gold rush for natural gas. Seduced by good reviews, I watched the movie "Gasland," a documentary about this topic. Although a well-made movie, I am now consumed with rage over our political indifference to the plight of citizens and the land itself, against the thuggery of corporations. But I'm not even going to get into it. If you are interested see the movie or google fracking. Enough said.

In another sad tale, I must report that I once again have gone around the block of dissatisfaction with the organization that employs me. It seems like businesses are exactly like families in the way they can repeat the same argument over and over, without anything new being said. If there were not outside forces pulling us this way and that, we wouldn't be able to change at all. I only have myself to blame of course, for not finding either a way out or another way through the points of contention. But like the topic above, it seems like something I have little control over, and hence the unhappiness it causes.

Perhaps it is just the weather affecting me. Today was the first real rain in about two months. This signals the end of summer and the beginning of our very wet winter. You would think I would have found peace with the changing seasons, but I hate to see the warm weather go.

Beachy

2011-09-06T22:32:00.000-07:00

I grew up on the beach and if sand isn't in my veins, it is at least metaphorically in my hair. So I was happy to score a beach house for Labor Day weekend, and hopeful that the Oregon coast would come through with at least a couple of sunny days while we were there. Amazingly, the sun was out most of the time, and on Saturday a hot east wind made it reasonable to immerse briefly in the ice cold ocean and then lay out on the sand, soaking up the heat.

Oregon actually has a relatively high rate of skin cancer, because of moments like this. With so many cloudy days this summer, an opportunity to bare skin is a religious moment for some of us. I lay down on a towel and dug my fingers into the warm silky sand, remembering all the childhood days when I did the same thing, loving the surf filling up my ears with sound. I actually fell asleep for a little while, which is rare indeed. Later I took a walk after sunset and engaged in another childhood pleasure-- walking with my eyes closed. As far as I know, the beach is the only safe place to do this.

Walking on the beach always gives me a chance to think expansively. Perhaps the ocean stretching to the horizon pulls thoughts out and strings them together in long sentences that can be grasped better than when they run around the little tracks in my cranium. But I came out of that weekend with a firm intention to focus my efforts on one interest at a time, instead of a dozen all at once. Hence, I have gone back to an old project--getting all my poems in one virtual place, even if I have to type them all again, into this computer. This task has been about two thirds done for about five years. But until I have it all the way done, I can't decide what can be done with them, and what can be done next. Tonight I opened up the box with all the pieces of paper with poems on them, sorting which are digitally preserved and which are not. I still am filled with intention, and here is a poem from the collection.

Meditation

Air slips over sand, surf thumps
applauding each wave lipping the beach.

gulls butcher sandcrabs with a crunch
and garnish of seaweed

quartz runs fine like bathwater
through my fingers,

light stretches elastic across the sky
saturating sea and the dome behind my iris

each angle unbends toward the horizon
until I know nothing more.

The Limits of Being a Parent

2011-08-14T11:37:00.000-07:00

There comes a time in the life of every parent-child relationship, where you let go. I have been accused of hovering, worrying and directing the life of my son way past any appropriate age. Well, last night I think we finally passed a mutual test. He called out for help, I wasn't there and he found another solution. We are both proud and sad for each other. So much so that he didn't even eat the pancake I made for him today, and I felt okay about eating it instead. No hard feelings.

I realize the words above could have been written about any age after a child starts to eat real food. The process of becoming an adult has so many transitions. But the younger milestones are the stuff of children's books and parenting books galore. Once you get over the first day you drop your kid at daycare, the first day of school, the first bike ride, the first time behind the wheel, you would think there would be easy sailing ahead. The rest will just be a wonderful adult relationship with your begotten one, talking over interesting readings, joining me for concerts, hikes and vacations. Well, of course not. It is a constant pushing away, that takes decades. Although he still wants to be fed, we don't share any other common interests. Even though somehow he has absorbed my political perspectives, he is loathe to admit any similarities. Ah well, at least a paucity of employment has kept him around the home.

Yesterday evening Robert and I went to a community supper, put on by a local church. Although we had no connection to the religious aspect, I am happy to participate in any neighborhood gathering. I tried to convince my son to come along, but he refused and instead went off to water the vegetable garden at his father's house, several miles away. Dad was gone traveling for a week and in the meantime his house was being reconstructed by a team of workmen.

After setting up the sprinklers, my son went into the house to see what might be offered by the contents of the refrigerator. The house had new interior walls and would soon have new doors. For now, they were all stacked up, leaning against the refrigerator, which was in the middle of the soon to be kitchen. Somehow, the act of opening the refrigerator undid the delicate balance between the weight of the doors and opposing weight of the fridge. As soon as Evan opened the door, the refrigerator started to fall, along with the wood doors leaning against it. Although he was able to close the door, he was not able to right the fridge and doors. If he managed to extract himself everything would crash to the ground, which would at least damage the new fridge and possibly trap some body part as he tried to get away.

So holding the fridge and doors against his back, Evan took out his phone and called his mother. No answer. This was not surprising since I rarely carry my cell phone on my body, and certainly didn't think to have it as I strolled two blocks to the church supper. Then he tried Robert's phone. Robert has a "smart phone' which is always with him, but he had turned the volume off in deference to the social occasion. He did not notice the call. So then Evan started calling his friends. He found one close enough to come over and help. But by the time we got back to the house and called Evan, his friend still had not arrived. Evan had been applying his weight against the refrigerator for about 45 minutes.

So we called the friend and helped him find the house, but I could do nothing more than wait to find out whether my 21 year son would be crushed by a refrigerator or saved by his friend. After about ten more minutes, we did find out that of course, he was saved. My son who hates to ask for help, managed to reach out to his peers and and get what he needed, just in time. I learned that I truly can't be there for him every time he might need me, but I did promise myself I would learn to carry my cell phone.

Retirement

2011-08-03T23:04:00.000-07:00

My friends are retiring, as in, failing to go to work each day. Some enter a frenetic world of unpaid labor, for which they get only thanks, what they were looking for in the first place. Others wake later and later, and dissipate the hours in some combination of household tasks and electric aided entertainment that quickly causes the sun to set. (If you ever doubt how much electricity determines your activity, throw the breaker and see how quickly you become bored.) I watch the transition with some envy and more despair.

I have always wanted to do more than I can possibly manage. In theory, it is only the eight hours of paid labor I do each day that gets in the way of the incredible productivity I have in my mind. But each weekend I disprove this fantasy, as I loaf and lounge and entertain my way through my free hours. I know that if my job disappeared, I would be no more likely to get to my long list of potential accomplishments as I am in the hours between work. I think that we have a set point for purposeful activity, just like we do for calorie intake.

Recently my eighty year old mother visited me for two weeks and put real fear into me. Although she has been busy and involved with many activities in her life, she is markedly slower in her physical self, and has become ridden with worry and a sense of fruitlessness that spoils any effort to engage in meaningful acts. I realize that old age is a battle between your body and your mind. Whichever is weaker pulls the other down and the spiral can be inexorable.

I am sure I don't want to end up like that. I don't want to have decades with no purpose. Even though my job has its repetitive grind, it is still the most interesting part of most days. I think most people retire because are sick unto death with the job they have, not because life without a job seems so compelling. But I don't know. Retirement is something you can't know until you get there. I'm not there by a long shot.

Plums

2011-07-27T23:10:00.000-07:00

I have just been preserving some plums from my two plum trees. Luckily the trees are small and ridden with leaf eating insects, or else I would have a true crop surplus on my hands. I hate to see even one piece of fruit go to waste.

Last year I made a batch of jam, and some sorbet with these plums, which are too juicy for drying. But Robert has already filled the cupboard with strawberry and raspberry jam, added to the jars left from last year, so I don't think that is a good use of this luscious fruit. Without energy for fancy recipes, I just squeezed about thirty plums and added some sugar and brought them to a boil. When cool, I will simple freeze the juice and hope I remember it is there for smoothies and to mix with club soda throughout the year. I also experimented with pouring some vinegar on some whole plums stuffed in a jar, to see if plum vinegar could be produced. If so, I will add it to my strawberry and raspberry vinegars. I am delighted to have these fruity vinegars for salad dressing, but my housemates are unimpressed with red vinegar, no matter what the flavor.

I am feeling frugal, due to the fear of our impending default on the national debt. Somehow I think the stupidity of this government is going to end up affecting my own bottom line, and I will be glad to have a cupboard full of jam and vinegar. It is true that Legal Aid, who I work for, is primarily funded with federal dollars, so if the whole county goes topsy turvey, I will perhaps be out of a job.

I can't eat plums without thinking of the poem by William Carlos Williams and wanting to create some homage of my own:

It is cruel to strangle each little plum by its pit,
Squeezing guts into a pan, tossing away the skin,
and then turning up the heat until there is roiling fuschia
but I could not leave such sweetness on the ground
for the raccoon to gather in his clawed fingers.
and suck into his pointed mouth.

Can't Sleep

2011-07-16T23:55:00.000-07:00

I have been neglecting my writing, which means that I have been missing myself. Tonight I went to bed, trying to feel tired, but couldn't get there. Mostly, this is caused by the discomfort of having my mother visit for two weeks. We are more than halfway through and I can see the light, but it is still tough. Many women see their mother every day and they are used to all the slings and arrows of childhood being flung back and forth all life long. I went three thousand miles away, as soon as I had the choice and it was perhaps the only clear decision of my life. There was just no doubt that I wanted to be far away from my birthplace.

I can't even say that there is anything wrong with my mother. It's just that I hate to see all the ways I am just like her. I just can't stand the similarities. And I can't act like my normal adult being when she is in the house. I run to work to relax into who I have become. That is all worthy of endless therapy, but it is easier to keep a big country between us.

For right now, I am keeping a little list of the things I will do when I get normal life back. Sorry, Mom.

Big Birthday

2011-06-27T22:59:00.000-07:00

I just reached the speed limit of birthdays. It has been feeling too fast for awhile, and now it is official. My life has been full of half-hearted attempts at achievement, followed by long periods of potential. I seem to remember a physics lesson about potential and kinetic energy that might apply. I believe that everything important to know I learned before I was fourteen, including stuff that involved pulleys and springs.

This might be the first birthday ever when I didn't even get a cake. Somehow the tradition of chocolate cake has been replaced by expensive restaurant meals. I must visit a bakery tomorrow and correct the omission.

It is cliche to comment on the aging process. For one thing you immediately lose your audience. Those older than you make fun of your anguish. Those younger still can't imagine what you are talking about. Also, we all worry about such different things. I repeatedly come back to a board game I played as a kid, called "Careers" where you had to pick a mix of fame, fortune and happiness, and find the career that was most likely to give you that mix. I remember I always did an even division, unable to guess which aspect of life might be the most important. I note that there was no option to choose lawyer in that game, perhaps indicating a basic flaw in my path.

Anyway, as I face the second half of life (!), I promise myself there will be more creativity, more friends, and more adventures. There will be more action, less potential energy stored in springs. There will be more beauty, less cynicism. Already, it has begun.

Lost in the Funhouse

2011-06-17T21:32:00.000-07:00

I have been lost in Blipland for more than a month. This magical place is found at blipfoto.com, where I masquerade as Lido Beach. http://www.blipfoto.com/grazingllama Although writing words is part of the experience, mostly it is a daily scavenger hunt for a photo worthy of framing for all to see. Because of this activity, my image-ining being must apologize to my literary being. But here I am, at my wordy desk.

Geography and its delights depends on expectations about the weather. The Northwest has not been behaving as it should and thus, a trip to the emptiness of southeast Oregon did not yield the hot dry weather I craved. It was cool, rainy and the high places were filled with snow. But where most of the landscape is open for the taking, and you can camp and hike wherever you want, I relaxed into the car camping routine, which goes like this: Take everything out of the car, make some imitation of a home without all those hard edged walls, cook, clean, sit around, go to sleep, and then put it all back into the car and go some other place and take it all out again.

During our journeys we saw evidence of those who tried to keep the outside out and then what happens when they gave up. How quickly nature took back the property, the rats and owls and swallows moving into places where people once had raised a family. It was fun and sad to take pictures of the disintegration.

Looking at the remnants of lives lived makes me yearn to create something of value to mark my place on earth. I know the Ozymandias foolishness of this desire, but it fuels my creative endeavors. In the end, I just want to be able to see a path behind me of where I have been, to remember all the days, even as they slip away.

Stuff

2011-05-22T07:36:00.000-07:00

I woke up in a sweat, which is the usual consequence of the hot flashes that hit me at night, like lightning rolling across the hills. However, this arousal seemed more the fault of a dream, where I gave some menacing street people some money, only to discover later that they found my home and further ripped me off. I know this scene came from yesterday when I saw an apparently prosperous man stop and give another man who was sitting on the sidewalk, some money and engage in a conversation. I wondered why I, passing the same sidewalk sitter, had not done the same. Overhearing the two talking, as I unlocked my bicycle, I heard a scrap of information about the charity recipient, that he was trying to get a visa so he could work, and my sympathy moved towards him. So he was not a street person by avocation, only in governmental limbo, trying the best he could. This was immediately replaced by the thought that he was probably lying.

What is it that makes us simultaneously want to connect with others and stand in suspicious judgment over them? My guess is that we are all in a state of insecurity, perhaps a remnant of our animal days where we could be attacked at any moment by a saber tooth tiger. This feeling is often triggered by situations where money is exchanged for something we want. Earlier this same day I bought two expensive objects. First, a fancy raincoat, to replace one that had gone missing after twenty years of service. The second was a framed photograph I saw as we toured neighborhood homes in an "Art Walk." The coat I undoubtedly will use over and over in this rainy climate, but I realized my decision to purchase this item was determined entirely by the endorsement given by the helpful salesman, who said he owned this very model and loved it. Getting it home, I still am pleased with it, but I feel I might have been told what I want to hear, a time honored technique of retail sales. What I don't understand is why it works so well. Am I so desperate to ally with a complete stranger that I would put down hard earned money to show approval and agreement?

The second purchase was certainly of no use at all, yet I felt drawn by its beauty and felt desire to have it for my own. Is this the same covetous nature that caused us to extirpate the Indians from the US, and now the seal lions who dare to take salmon we might otherwise catch and eat? Of course I paid money for this item, yet somehow, as soon as I got it home, I was disappointed with it, proof of the folly of all shopping. The potential to buy a piece of happiness is never fulfilled. The real question is why, in the face of multiple lessons do we never learn?

I think it is because money is a magic system we have created to trick us into feeling good. When we have extra cash, we look around for how to trade it for stuff to induce a positive emotion. This transaction always ends up inferior to the truer ways of feeling good; the ones that involve personal effort or mastery or risk. For the last ten days or so I have been smitten by a new website where you post one photograph taken each day, with room to name and explain your choice. It has been a fun challenge to go out and take photos every day and pick one that you want to share with the unknown masses. I discovered I do not have the chops to produce good photos on demand. My success with photography comes with beautiful places I happen into, not because I have an eye for the shot. And certainly I do not have the patience to tune a photograph into its best version. Perhaps I was just acknowledging my limits in buying a picture from a person who makes a living with a camera.

It is interesting that the word "stuff" means both an essential essence and unclassifiable debris of possession. Contrast "We are such stuff as dreams are made on," from Shakespeare, and the recent newspaper headline: "Piles of stuff complicated Southeast Portland housefire." I guess we keep hoping to buy the former, but end up with the latter.

Sound of Music

2011-05-05T21:49:00.000-07:00

At the Sign of Concordance

We arrive in automobiles
conveyed from city intersections
and airport concourses,
on a winding road
that ends at three rocks
splashed by the Pacific.

We come for strange music:
not pop or classical, not
techno, rap, house, emo, folk, trance
nor any of that ilk.
What we play needs at least a sentence
perhaps a paragraph to describe.

What we love needs even more room to explain.
Music yes, but also the way the sun
hits the face after a fortnight of rain,
the way we greet each other like distant relatives,
also the Sitka spruce, and elk,
and Salmon River, S-curving to the sea.

What we do is very simple.
We take air sweetened by violets and alder,
wiggle our fingers and blow;
into story and meditation,
into history and dance. We are magicians,
changing oxygen into happiness.

5/2/11
At the Wind and Waves Recorder Workshop

This Land Is Your Land

2011-04-20T07:34:00.000-07:00

It was evening, the salmon feast had been cleared away, and the hundred or so participants in the annual meeting of the Oregon Natural Desert Association were hanging out, listening to the local country band, the Wheeler County Ramblers, or circling the bonfire outside the dining hall at Hancock Field Station, in the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. We were feeling very good, helped by a keg of microbrew and the righteous tiredness of having toiled on the side of the earth all day.

I had been with a group who hiked a very steep road for two miles to remove a half mile of barbed wire fence. Most of us had joined ONDA on a fencepull before, so we quickly found an order to the work, first untwisting the metal stays that spread the strands of wire apart, and then unbending the wire clips holding the wire to the metal posts. Once the wire was hanging limply, we cut it and rolled it into pointy wreaths, piling them for later pickup with a truck. Finally, the more brawny members of the group used the levered post-puller to wrench the post out of the ground.

The volunteers were mostly from the ranks of the retired and near retired, contrasting with the youthful staff of ONDA. During the hike and work we compared our lives, finding intersections in our backgrounds, and we looked from the high ridge to the vistas surrounding us. Although the day was mostly cloudy, the brown hills were starkly beautiful, with outcroppings colored by the volcanic ash formations for which this area is known. The one stripe of green was in the valley where a curve of the John Day river could be seen, bisecting the spring hayfields.

I was struck by how capable humans can be, whether in putting up this fence to turn a jumble of contours into a container for cattle, or when removing the same fence, erasing the legacy of exploitation, and giving wildlife another chance to roam free. Once we have a purpose, we can do most anything we can think of. This has been our genius and our curse.

Back in the dining hall, the Ramblers were dutifully playing through the top one hundred hits of the 1960's. and '70's. Of course I knew them all, and something in me demands that I move my feet whenever a drumkit starts pumping out a rock beat. As I was hopping around in some semblance of dancing I perfected around 1975, the band started into the Woody Guthrie anthem, "This Land Is Your Land." Although I had never danced to this folk song before, I realized that this song has been the hymn of my whole life. Whether I first learned it at school, or with the neighborhood activists who gathered the local kids for "Hootenannies," this song has perfectly embodied both my nationalism and revolution in one gesture. This land will always be yours and mine, and how to have both at once, sharing with others and treasuring it for yourself, is the eternal tension of our life on this planet.

Sleepless In Seattle

2011-04-02T15:45:00.000-07:00

     I have spent the last two weeks at the mercy of the flu. It made me less able to fill my head with busyness, which changed my perspective from relentlessly purposeful to a more passive awareness.
     "What do you want for dinner?" Robert asks, rising to the role of nurse.
     "I don't care, as long as it isn't a lot," I answer, for once throwing out all the various food rules I might otherwise invoke: as in, nothing we already had this week, nothing flown in from another hemisphere, nothing that swims in the ocean, etc.

In such a mood, I stumbled on the Seattle Area Happiness survey, which I recommend, for a reality check about your own view of yourself. http://www.sustainableseattle.org/survey/GNH/en/. Apparently, I have been exaggerating my degree of satisfaction with life. Or more likely, I accept my cynicism as intellectual rigor, rather than the actual damper on pleasure that it is. Anyway, I scored below average in happiness.

      Maybe I am too fond of the scientific method, but taking the survey made me think of the aspects of myself that pull me down. One of them is the sheer weight of personal history. Even when life is good in the present, I unconsciously measure today's happiness against the accumulated disappointments that have come before. This is bolstered by the knowledge that I have proof of such disappointment, filed in shoeboxes in a closet, under the heading of mementos. I keep cards, letters, ticket stubs, programs, and the like, in order to have a record of my life. To be certain of my general impression of these materials, I open a box and start going through it. Evidence of bad choices in love immediately overbalances best wishes in Christmas cards, good grades of my son, and proof of a steady diet of cultural happenings. Reading such mementos shows that I have a long history of struggling with disatisfactions, both in myself and others. I continually resolve to change everything into some ideal that has yet to materialize. No wonder I am unable to just be.

     Sickness has a way of focusing us back to the physical self. I can't begin to philosophize about how I should live when coughing makes my ribs hurt. But getting back to health, I do see a route to more happiness. I begin to toss the contents of those shoeboxes. Not everything, but the stuff that makes me feel bad. Why did I think I would want to refresh those recollections? After filling a grocery sack, I am starting to feel better.

Death in the Afternoon

2011-03-20T21:39:00.000-07:00

     On Friday I boasted that I hadn't had a cold in a year. Today, I feel a cold invading and taking over my body. Almost as if the Gods on Mt. Olympus felt the need to illustrate the sin of hubris to me personally. I'm sorry!
     Before I succumb to viral domination, I must relate to the issues of the week. First, it is amazing how we have had an earthquake, a tsunami and now we are bombing a new country, and still I can't see that this has affected day to day life in the US in any way, except reviving my worry about being prepared for catashtrophe. I think I have convinced myself and Robert that we should store some water and food, out in the shed, where we could get it if our house fell down and didn't miraculously kill us in the process. Why is it so hard to plan for something that only might happen? We don't want to face a probability of disaster. The same tendency in us doesn't want to accept global warming. I will get my plastic storage container and start filling it with food we can use up camping, when the apocalypse doesn't come after all.
     Today I cut down an old rose bush and pried the roots out of the ground, breaking the handle off of one old shovel in the process. The flowers were not especially pretty ones, their stalks extremely thorny, catching our arms as we reach to turn on the nearby faucet, and I have a much better plan to start a kiwi vine in the sunny spot, but I still felt like a murderer, ripping out the bush that I am sure had been there for at least twenty years.
   Meanwhile, my neighbor Barb and I compared sightings of the rat that lives among us. She saw it in the bird feeder and I saw it dart under our front steps.   We both revile the thing but are too soft hearted to actually hunt it. I promise to put out a trap I bought a year ago, but shudder at being responsible for its death. We are programmed to treasure life of all kinds, even as we also know we must kill to live. Modern humans have been responsible for so much death, for so many less important reasons than to eat, that where to draw the line has become hard to see. Does a rat have a right to its life, just like an old rosebush?

Our trip to Hawaii is receding into the past, but I will keep it alive with a few more pictures.

The Stand-up Paddleboards we took a lesson on

An old church on the quiet side of Maui

A woodcarver in Lahaina

A gravestone

Volcanic beach cobbles

This Side of Paradise

2011-03-13T09:59:00.000-07:00

I went to Maui for a week and came back with a tan wrestled from an excess of rain. The island is shaped in a figure eight, with two volcanic breasts spanned by a plain of sugar cane. In olden days the sugar would have been taro and fish ponds, and before that, probably a wetland filled with invertebrates and minnows.
Because the Japan earthquake and tsunami came only two days after we left, it reinforced how vulnerable islands are. When we were there the peaks snared rain clouds like a comb grabs tangles and every afternoon the wind picked up and blew the heads of palm trees like they were speeding down a freeway in a convertible. There is just so much water sloshing around these chunks of rock, that they have no defense against the mighty ocean.

The job of tourists is to tour and we did too much of that, inscribing the letter eight with our tires and then up to the crater which rewarded us with only torrents of rain, and one little native red honeycreeper, the i’iwi, that we dared to look for in the downpour. Even though the resorts were perfectly manicured around lovely beaches, we could not resist the lure of the one lane roads that led to a glimpse of Hawaii, before landscapers carved away the excess vegetation. Like all places that humans have had their way with, the proof of true wilderness is slight and we traded a view of condos for pasture land and cows. But at least the hills tumbled down to the sea without the line of concrete blocks sheltering pairs of vacationers each sitting on their lanais enjoying fruity drinks. And yes, we were those people also.

The best thing about Hawaii is simply the warmth of the heavy air. Since we evolved in the hot regions of the world, I think some part of our cells craves the heat and longs to throw off the drapings of cloth we normally shield ourselves with. Uncovering arms and legs, is perhaps the most lasting pleasure of those used to a harder climate. Just taking off the shoes for bare feet is a revelation, sending me back to childhood in Vermont, where we went barefoot much of the summer, and the washing of the feet before bed was the last act before slipping into bed.

Back home in the rainy chilly Northwest, I am confronted with what meaning I can construct from this desire to leave what we know for some other viewpoint. Perhaps the need to wander is as strong as the urge to bare the skin to the sun and air. This has put us in all parts of the globe, just lighting out for the territory because it is there. While we were in Hawaii, the humpback whales were there too, splashing and playing just off the shore giving their babies a warm birth before they migrate to the frigid Arctic waters where food is found. I’m not sure the idea of home is as strong as we like to claim it is. Certainly, we seem to crave the contrast between what we know and what we don’t, and the journey that pulls us between.

Songs in the Key of Life

2011-02-20T17:37:00.000-08:00

I’ve told myself that this blog is only valuable (to me) if it induces semi-regular writing. Two weeks is about the limit to my idea of regular, so I am here to honor the vow, but maybe nothing else. Sometimes life steadily goes on but does not congeal into an idea of why. These last two weeks have had the usual swings at purpose, but no homeruns of insight.

I planted trees with Friends of Trees two Saturdays in a row. This frequency is unusual, but the experience is familiar, and both morally uplifting and physically demoralizing. I meet interesting people, enjoy the outdoors, get some carbon dioxide eaters into the ground, and use all those muscles I don’t challenge in my weekly marathons of sitting at a desk. How could it be bad? Yesterday had the added bonus of brilliant sun all morning.

Last week also saw the appearance of the uncommon son, the college junior home for the Canadian equivalent of Spring Break; although that nation at least gives it an academic patina, by calling it “Reading Week.” All my motherly helpfulness returned in full force, especially since he had a friend with him, seeing Portland for the first time. Despite my lists of important tourist locations, they mostly targetted food carts and bars, like you would expect of 21-year olds.

Then there was work. What can you say about a job that I have done forever, but still manages to be equal parts of frustration, challenge, and fun?   Isn’t that the definition of work? Something that compels but can’t ever be finished.

Perhaps the best metaphor of meaning for my life is found at the swimming pool. I go there to do laps, at least three times a week, sometimes four. It is accurate to say that I have been swimming for almost all my life. I’m driven partly by the sensual pleasure of the water touching every part of my body, and partly by the grim belief that if I don’t keep moving I will come to an earlier and more grisly end.   We are doubly motivated by a desire to find pleasure and stave off death. We seem to bounce between each pole, sometimes feeling like a ping pong ball, sometimes thrumming harmoniously like a guitar being strummed.

Another frequent activity is playing recorder music with various sets of like minded players. Last week I went to four such gatherings, a busy week.   I am not a brilliant musician by any means, but it is so satisfying to join a group that finds unity of purpose, and for a hour or two, has the tangible melody of our effort to listen to. I’m not sure I need more than those harmonies on purpose.

Sunday Morning

2011-02-06T21:12:00.000-08:00

Every Sunday, over coffee and the newspaper, I am asked, either by myself or others, what will you do today? I hate that question, especially on Sunday, where the clash between worship and work often turns into soggy indecision, and the hours tick by, removing choice by nightfall.

Today was an exception. Although breakfast presented the usual question, the answer was at the hummingbird feeder, a blurry yellow flit, twice as big as a hummer. I found my glasses and binoculars and hoped for a second coming. The bird did revisit the feeder, and I was able to pull out the bird book and identify that it was a female Townsend’s warbler who had found the fountain of sweetness in the one drinking station that didn’t have the yellow grating over it, sized only for hummingbirds and not their bigger-beaked cousins.

I am a lazy birder, so having a yellow headed warbler visit my home in the winter, posing several times for a full identification from the dining table to occur, met all my needs for a religious experience. After that, the day felt free and fanciful. Meaning had been accomplished before 9:00 AM and I could rightfully loaf the rest of the day. I found the perfect combination of exercise, chores, and relaxation to make it a Good Sunday. The fact that dinner was supplied by excellent leftovers, made it even better.

Wearing down the hours of the day, I tuned into Terry Tempest Williams on the radio, who spoke wisdom as usual. She sounded a warning about our loss of knowledge of the natural world, which makes the actual biological losses so much harder to appreciate. She also talked about our readiness to speak our opinions, rather than share our knowledge as part of the reason we continue to politically tear ourselves apart.

To spread the word, we passed on the sighting of the Townsend’s warbler to our next door neighbor, and admired the snowdrops blooming in a friend’s yard.

She says, “I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;”
-from Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens

Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright.

2011-01-30T13:09:00.000-08:00

This week, what used to be called the “ladies section” of the newspaper, which has now has turned into the “mommy bloggers” cadre was alive with reviews and comments about the Tiger Mother theory of parenting. Espoused by a Chinese-American law professor, the methodology seems to rely heavily on the practice of musical instruments and demanding perfection in all things by small children. I will admit that I only read the reviews, and have no interest in the actual book, if only because my effort at parenting is finished, with the outcome managing for himself, with any wounds I may have inflicted.

Whenever parenting techniques are mentioned, I am naturally thrown back to my own childhood memories, which were recently enhanced by the arrival of a treasure trove of photos, drawings and words from my mother. Having just turned 80, Mom is lightening her physical burden by dividing the snapshot collection, historically kept in an undifferentiated pile in a plain wood box, parceling them out to me and my siblings.

The photos were ones that I had seen many times before and therefore they did not trigger any new memories, only reawakened the little storage compartments in my brain where those scenes were stored. The pictures confirm my general impression that my childhood was full of positive experiences. I especially like the one of me intently gripping a baseball bat, ready to swing. Unlike today’s emphasis on organized teams and proper uniforms, this picture has me in a dress, in my neighbor’s fenced yard. The other one I love is a rare shot of me in band class, holding my trombone like a lover, which given how long my lips pressed against the mouthpiece, I suppose it was.

Although I was a straight-A student throughout grade school, I did not go on to become a great scholar in college. I did not become a famous musician or baseball player. I have no memory of either parent ever telling me to do my homework or practice longer, or even try harder. It seems I was self-motivated, though I know that my father succeeded in conveying his high expectations for excellence to his children through more subtle and not altogether nice methods. Because he was a high school teacher of English, as opposed to my artistically focused mother, his praise was what was important to us children in the academic realm. Unfortunately, he rarely expressed approval directly, and we divided between those who worked for his cryptic affirmations and those who rejected his right to judge.

There was plenty of contention in our home, concentrated between my parents, but their frustration spilled out on us children as loud commands to do this and that, in a fruitless effort to maintain the household in an organized state. Five children make a constant mess and that is just a fact. As a result of overcrowding, we sought other people’s homes to while away the free hours, and also spent a lot of time outdoors. This gave us every opportunity for adventure and new experiences, which formed the bulk of my learning.

The idea that parents should force their children into long hours of study and practice as a matter of discipline seems absolutely wrong to me. Although I am still upset that I couldn’t get my son to memorize the multiplication table, I know that my formative childhood experiences were not in a classroom. They were when we kids explored the world on our own, without parental supervision, daring ourselves to go somewhere we hadn’t been before.

Gelato, Palio, and Groupon

2011-01-13T22:48:00.000-08:00

   Last year I went to Italy with my 79 year old mother.   The outlook for this vacation was grim the moment we arrived in Lucca, because traipsing up and down the cobblestone streets it was clear to me that she really couldn’t walk too well anymore. I guess this is a moment that happens to any daughter confronting an aging parent, but at first it really angered me.
   “Why did you let yourself gain so much weight, why haven’t you kept up with exercise?,” I said to myself, and to her, in slightly less direct language. But what I really meant was, “When did you get old?”
   But once I resigned myself to the limits of her impaired mobility, I was able to concentrate on where we actually were, instead of all the possible places we could have gotten to, had we the infinite energy I always imagine I have. I still forced her up third floor walk-up hotel rooms, and through the long halled museums and into each nave of every cathedral, but she got to lie down when I perambulated the streets of Sienna and take the train rather than the hike at Cinque Terre.

I know my mom was mostly miserable on this trip and she swears she will never travel to Europe again, but we did have at least one pleasure in common, our daily gelato. I know you can get gelato in the US, but in Italy there seems to be a gelato stand on every corner and they all seemed to offer a wonderful product. This was the only moment each day for which Mom found a smile that wasn’t a grimace. Sorry Mom! I should say that when she went home, months later she actually visited a doctor and got a diagnosis that wasn’t the fault of her sloth, and could be mitigated with the right stretching exercises.
Meanwhile, I looked at the art and architecture, especially taken with the splendor of the churches and the towns, and art so devoted to religion. What amazes me about Europe is how much of the structure of the Renaissance and Baroque era is still there and how unified society seemed to be in the old, old days. Surely, the pervasiveness of religion must have been stultifying in some ways, but compared to the cacophony of modern civilization, the symmetry of society seems retrospectively attractive.

We spent several days in Siena, and I witnessed one of the pep rallies for the Palio, the horse race that would take place in the bricked square later in the summer. Hundreds of townspeople gathered in the square to take part in and witness a ceremony of trumpets and flag tossing and singing of songs was both stirring and touching. Of course, many Oregonians engaged in similar behavior for the recent Ducks football championship. But the fact that in Siena the tradition stretches back to the Middle Ages, gave the scene a little more majesty.

Our society today, seems to find very little to agree upon and yet as we engage in conflict we fear its incendiary nature. The shooting of Arizona Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, is the most shocking evidence of the animosity hanging in the air. The fact is, we are united more by the products we share, than by any central truth. Is it possible that while commercial speech aims to join us together in pursuit of a common expenditure, such as Groupon does, political speech is focused on splitting us down the middle? An old friend called me to talk to someone she was sure would share her views on recent political events, but we ended up disagreeing on taxes and government, differences I never knew were there. Sometimes, I wonder if it would have been better in Siena in the 1500's. Then I remember the Montagues and Capulets and realize it has always been this way.

Stopping By The Woods

2011-01-04T23:34:00.000-08:00

One of the evils of city living is that it is hard to leave. Even when traffic and time are not impediments, everything beyond the borders of streets and houses seems far away. Thus, I go to the country much less than I mean to.
But Sunday was sunny and cold and I knew there was snow galore in the mountains, so Rob and I went to the Wind River area of hills in Washington to cross country ski for me, and snowshoe for him.

Although the traffic tie ups around Mt. Hood had been making the news, there were very few visitors to this land of gentle hills that border the Indian Heaven wilderness area. Perhaps that was because the road was icy and curvy the last ten miles.

Skiing in the sun through the woods is about as close to bliss as I can get.

Maybe it is because I get so light starved in the winter, or go through the day, tense with the damp chill of this rainy climate, but the chance to synchronize my arms and legs in big graceful strides and the soft shush of each step almost puts me to sleep with calm. The right music on the Ipod didn’t hurt my mood either

New Year And Its Discontents

2010-12-31T16:53:00.000-08:00

   Raised Catholic as a child, I made many promises to be good. Each time I went to the confessional to unload my petty sins, I promised to do better next time. A few Hail Marys were all I needed to send me on my way to a better life. And any time I faced fear, I bargained hard with my goodness in order to avert disaster.
“ Oh please God, I promise I will always believe in you if you just don’t let Mom and Dad die in a car accident.”
   This prayer was invoked when I babysat my brothers and sisters, and thought my parents were overdue from whatever journey they were on.   Staring out the window, I willed their car to appear and implored the deity to keep them safe.
   Praying is the primary attraction of Christianity, the idea that by asking an invisible entity for help you can improve your chances for a positive outcome. It was a good tool, right up until I realized I was just talking to myself. Then I was left with resolutions, backed up with only my good intentions, which are not easily able to surmount the ever heavier burden of past behavior. We are repetitive creatures!
   So to prove this point I offer a poem from ten years ago, which reiterates some nearly identical concerns of myself today. The only solace is that my failure to keep these resolutions has not seemed to interfere with my general enjoyment of life as it is, even as I miss that perfection of what I imagine I should be.

2001 (or 2011) Resolutions

The year electricity gave out, stopped answering our call,
petered out before it ever got to the switch. Finally in the dark
we see light as a treasure instead of a given.

The year coffee turned from medicine to poison, addicted,
overly devoted to dosage, technique, bitterness, I give it up
turn to milky tea, and sky becomes the first thing in the morning.

The year the newspaper stops landing on the front step,
cigar of wasted tree, smeared with words I am greedy for
redundant, trivial, disturbing, using up the free spaces of morning brain.

The year I see the commuting miles piling up, slowing me down
I-205, Powell Bvd to Oregon City, etched forever behind my eyeballs
even the hawk hunting the median strip can’t relieve my boredom.

The year I hear the hammer hit the head of the cow
minced into hamburger, see the chicken on the guillotine
feel the loneliness of the fish as it takes the hook, and back away.

The year I read less, stop looking for answers, imagining
what might happen, and do what I can, find a candle,
make a fire, start living life and writing down as I go.

Dark Thoughts For Solstice

2010-12-20T23:42:00.000-08:00

A Different Twist on Yeats

When he mentions the widening gyre
did he have my slackening belly in mind
circling the umbilical dimple, spreading
beyond the natural buttress of the pelvis,
toward a curve ever further.

Did he mean to invoke the slouching
of each cell, leaning with gravitational
tide, threatening at all times to body slam
my whole raison d’etre from whence
I derive and eventually succumb.

When birds express their harsh indignation
by ripping into my flaccid flesh
will there be a line of ants assembled
to receive communion and transport tiny parts
of me into the mouths of babes?

12/21/10

Plants and People United

2010-12-11T18:53:00.000-08:00

Today I went out to play my role as crew leader for Friends of Trees, the group in Portland whose mission is spreading woody vegetation throughout the city. There are so many reasons why this is a good idea, but today rain was constant for the entire time, testing our resolve and waterproof clothing. With excessive precipitation in the northwest and blizzards in the midwest and Europe, I wonder if this is the increased intensity of weather that is promised by global warming. If so, it seems like it will be tough to adjust to, but buying shares of GoreTex, or at least plenty of articles of clothing of that miracle fabric might be a first step.

A neighborhood treeplanting appears to operate on the exact opposite premise of the old movie, Field of Dreams. In the movie the catch phrase was “If you build it, they will come,” referring to a magical baseball game that would happen when a baseball field is created. For a treeplanting, it seems like the adage should be “If they come, we will build it,” because the trees just can’t get planted unless the volunteers show up with their trucks and muscles and willingness. Every time it comes together, and every time it is a magical thing.
In reality of course, volunteers and the paid staff have spent months getting all the parts together so that we can’t help but rise early, don our raincoats and go out to get very wet and dirty and put some trees in the ground. Today, two dozen crews planted 250 trees.

My crew were all homeowners who had signed up to get a tree in their planting strip by the curb. City inspectors had previously inspected for the placement and size of tree, probationers had come and dug the holes, utilities had marked the placement of their lines, and neighborhood association volunteers had solicited donations from local eateries so that the planters could be fed both breakfast and lunch. Other volunteers had coordinated the ordering of the trees, the operation of the food preparation, and the all important sign-up of trucks and truck drivers. In the city, people who own pickups are always beseeched by their neighbors, and this is one of those times.

Because of the torrents of rain I didn’t expect a lot of manpower, but we had what we needed, including a chef, two teachers and a social service provider. There was also the nine year old son of the chef, who assisted at the site of the first tree, but rather wisely retreated to the truck and his book for the remainder of the exercise.

Maybe because we were all skilled at working with others, after I gave the demonstration on planting, everyone literally dug in and worked great together. I’m sure it also helped that we were all quickly sopping wet and on the verge of being cold if we didn’t keep moving, but we got the work done and were back for lunch by 12:30 PM. After stripping off at least one layer of wetness, we were spooning into homemade soup and bread and exchanging business cards and email addresses. Each and every time I plant trees, in the perhaps vain hope of making a dent in carbon dioxide levels of the world, I coincidentally gain a palpable sense of goodwill towards my fellow humans. For whatever reason, it always works!

Trying To Keep Up With Myself

2010-11-27T19:56:00.000-08:00

The challenge of my life has always been how to schedule enough doing to feel busy, healthy, creative and effective, and still have time to recollect the meaning of it all along the way. Here we are at the end of November and I never finished my California trip in October. I never mentioned walking in the redwoods which felt more like a cemetery than a refuge. So many trees were chopped down for so little and now only a token is left. The one part I appreciated were the plaques commemorating the selfless effort of a few conservationists to save each grove from the chainsaw. Even with the underlying sorrow, each tree is amazing.

That night we stayed at a little campground on the Klamath River and met the only other campers, a couple from Eugene. We bonded over Robert’s interest in their teardrop camper, and the fact that the other woman was another tall Ellen. It’s the little things that bring us together.

The next day we drove up the coast through a very foggy tip of California into sunny Oregon, right after Gold Beach. We hiked out to Blacklock’s Point, and then up to the Oregon Dunes, staying in Eel Creek Campground.

Then we are back and life resumes, and now I am trying to write a novel in thirty days which is impossible, just in case you wondered. But I am up to 27,000 words and I have to persevere simply because I said I would. I am also helping to put together my neighborhood’s annual street tree planting next weekend and getting ready for several Christmas recorder gigs. Going to work is mercifully nonthreatening for the moment. No killer custody trials are looming.

I just returned from the place known as The Swamp for Thanksgiving. A cabin set on the very northern edge of the Klamath Marsh, it is owned by Robert’s sister and husband, and is isolated and beautiful.

We had to leave early for fear of getting snowed in. This didn’t seem like a bad fate, but I was overruled. Goodby herd of chickadees, hello Willamette Valley skies.

Under the Sea Wind

2010-11-07T16:59:00.000-08:00

I am writing a novel this month, with all the crazy folks of NaNoWri Mo, or National Novel Writing Month. This little endeavor is getting in the way of my blog. But I want to finish telling of my trip in California, before I forget it all.

From Point Reyes to Harbin Hot Springs we followed twisty roads through golden hills and then miles and miles of grape vines, in regimented lines. Although you see a lot of wine in the grocery store, I didn’t have a mental picture of how many grapes it takes. And we were only passing the elite wineries. Finding Harbin was a little tricky, as it is tucked into the hills, but once there we entered a world of body and mind consciousness raising planted in the ‘60's and flourishing ever since. Centered around several pools of various temperatures, visitors strip off their clothes in a unisex changing room, shower and partake of the waters in a hushed reverence. We were hungry so we had to cut short the power of hot water to eat various heathy options in the restaurant. Because it was the one night a week staff were served free, there was a big crowd in a great mood. They were especially excited because the founder, was on the premises.

We stayed in a geodesic tent cabin with one side of clear plastic so we could look out on the woods. It was a peaceful place. Rob woke up in the night and went to the hot pools but I slept on. In the morning I did a session of yoga in the temple which was hard and great. Then we were on out way, to a place we really knew little about, Sinkyone Park. This is adjacent to the Lost Coast, a part of the coast that has no road next to it and is undeveloped. Following directions both on the internet and by the person manning the nearest post office, we turned onto a dirt road so steep and narrow, we doubted it could be the right way. I turned around after about a quarter mile and went back to the pavement and then saw that someone had actually drawn an arrow with the name of the campground, Usal, on the road. So this was right.

After about six miles of a very primitive road, where we were singing the Subaru song the whole way, we came to the campground, which was next to the beach. There were a couple of people on the beach when we arrived and two vehicles parked in the campground, but we didn’t make contact with anyone once we got there. Only a couple of elk.

Up the coast the land fell straight into the sea. The waves roared up the pebble beach. It was beautiful and empty. Back at the campground, we set up out tent in a grove of alder. The moon rose as we cooked dinner. We slept well.

In the morning the tide was lower and gave us room to walk down the beach less than a mile. We slowly ambled, picking up souvenirs and listening to the restless sea. Then we were gone, back on the scary road and heading north to the redwoods.

California Dreaming

2010-10-30T18:05:00.000-07:00

We left San Fransisco in early afternoon and headed over the Golden Gate Bridge and up twisty Highway One. With eucalyptus trees scenting the air like a big cough lozenge, we stopped for views at the first place where the road found the edge of the cliff. The point had a complete view back to the city and north to Point Reyes. We were joined by two ladies who were still using film in their cameras, and three giggling chicas taking pictures with their I-Phones, who were from Dominican University, only about ten miles away. Of course we all traded cameras to take pictures of each other.

Heading north, past Stinson Beach, at the visitor center for the Point Reyes National Seashore we got a permit for a hike-in campsite. We then went to the trailhead and packed our backpacks for the two mile, one night expedition. This was ultralight backpacking!

We hiked through the grassy, sandy hills to the campsites close to the beach, throwing our backpacks into the metal boxes provided for raccoon protection, and headed down to the water for the sunset that was fast approaching. What a beautiful scene, with crowds of sandpipers and dowitchers on the shore and no houses as far as the eye could see.

The few other campers all came down to watch the sun sink into an pumpkin puddle.

We went back to the campsite and set up the tent and cooked dinner by headlamp. The air was still warm and the moon was up. It was easy to sleep well in our flyless tent, looking through the screened roof at the stars.

The next morning we caffeinated and went back to the beach. I ducked into the water which was cold but nothing like Oregon cold. Robert waded and thought about getting all the way in but never quite made it. We sunbathed in various states of undress, and I tried to capture the scene with colored pencils. Then late in the morning we went back to pack up and head out. Getting back to the campsite, where I had left my backpack on the table, I found that my wallet had been rifled and my money was on the ground. A five dollar bill had two corners chewed off. The dread raccoons had struck! We hiked back to the car, meeting several locals coming in take advantage of the rare October sun and heat. Then we headed for Sonoma and Harbin Hot Springs.

Reading about Point Reyes in the giveaway newspapers in the local stores, I learned that this place was saved for my public use as a result of a familiar struggle. First, a developer declares that he wants to build hundreds of houses and a small brave band of citizens tries to stop him. Locals are divided between those who can't understand why anyone would want this land and those who love it. The National Seashore designation came in 1962. We spent less than twenty-four hours there, but could have easily stayed a week.

On the Road Again

2010-10-18T22:49:00.000-07:00

I’ve just been traveling by car through the top half of California for the last two weeks and have seen enough beautiful interesting places to talk about for weeks to come. But given that we are in election time, I feel the need to speechify against the nabobs of negativism that seem to have gained the rhetorical upper hand.

What a great place we have! I haven’t done the carbon footprint math yet, but I have to say the USA has great roads. Maybe we don’t always appreciate how you can get from here to there, mostly on cruise control, but it keeps us tied together in ways the internet can never do. And wherever I went, there were road construction projects financed by — Stimulus Money, that’s what. Just look for the ARRA sign, indicating the funding and realize the a whole lot of people are working on the one thing we Americans really depend on, giving our vehicles a smooth ride.

Yosemite was the first place on our itinerary, and because the weather was rainy and cold for the first few days, I had more reason than usual to use all the amenities of this great National Park. There are a lot of people employed in that park, gladly warning you of bear hazards, and patiently entertaining all manner of anxious questions about the weather, road closures, bus routes and camping reservations. Although when we came back the fifth time to the wilderness permit office to return the bear cannister we has thought we needed but then realized we wouldn’t need, the ranger banned us from returning for at least a day. If this is government excess, then we are all a lot better off for it. And by the way, Yosemite is beautiful and spectacular, even in the rain and more so in the brilliant sun that finally appeared.

Next we went to San Fransisco, where every block seems to have ten restaurants and tourists from all over the world were spending freely. We happened to tour Alcatraz Island on Columbus Day and were nonplussed by how the welcoming presentation glossed over the Indian occupation of the island in 1969 and 1970 as a necessary prerequisite for the better economic opportunities now offered to Native Americans through casinos. However, the audio tour of the island, actually paints a fair picture of the misery of the prison, or at least as much as the average person can stand to hear about. It is one of the many chapters of our history that we have belatedly started to come to terms with. Overhearing comments of several visitors talking about the hard time they had done elsewhere and how Alcatraz compared, I thought how education is valuable in so many different ways.

The next day we went to Golden Gate park, to visit the serene Japanese Tea Garden and the impressive de Young museum. Although admission prices everywhere started to add up, I accepted this as part the American “you get what you pay for” mentality. We were kinda ripped off by one cab ride but entranced by another, who gave us a short history of the city from 1968 to the present day as he experienced it, and then said we were his last fare of the day (at one in the afternoon) and he was going home for a beer. Isn’t this the way travel is supposed to be? Disappointment around one corner sets up amazement for the next turn of the road.

There are more places to tell about, but the real story of this trip for me is that despite the impression you get from the media, every part of this country has its own unique geography and history. The fact that this is true proves that we are doing something very right. I was also very glad to see that Robert’s “smart phone” didn’t work very many places, and for the most part we were at the mercy of the place we were at. Which always turned out better than we expected.

From The Dry Side

2010-09-27T23:01:00.000-07:00

Desert Conference 25

It used to be at Malheur Field Station,
with hospital beds, communal showers, water laced with arsenic.
We went as penance for living high on the hog somewhere else.

There were no comfortable chairs, no air conditioning,
we sought refuge outside and gathered late at night
and early morning in the Greasewood Room to tame our addictions.

Though we suffered long lines in the cafeteria, there was bird watching
at refuge headquarters, and rendezvous at the flagpole
to plan strategy or head off together up Coyote Butte.

There were arguments about wilderness,
ranchers raging about coyotes,
and management plans that killed one animal to multiply another.

I always fell in love, with some handsome man whose
eyes glittered in sunset and words were passionate
about something living with sagebrush

I always stopped at Glass Butte for obsidian,
at Safeway for snacks, and at the first sightings
of yellow headed blackbirds or sandhill cranes.

I saw big horn sheep up Home Creek canyon,
I piled into a car for Malheur hotsprings at midnight
and woke at dawn to see sage grouse at their lek.

This year the conference was held at Big Muddy Ranch,
lately owned by Young Life, formerly by the Bhagwan.
I tried not to feel menace in the swarms of teens cheering their food.

But when we hiked out towards the John Day river,
into the tan September grass and the scrolling hills
I could not fault our location.

In the desert our handiwork is most obvious,
each road or radio tower or fenceline
is our fault and job and joy to remove.

I came from New York, informed only by a song
about home on the range where deer and antelope play.
All these years, it still sings to me.

Catholic Upbringing

2010-09-13T23:22:00.000-07:00

Circumnavigation of Ross Island

Once there was an island, home of bald eagle, osprey and muskrat,
but man got there and started sorting the sand and gravel into piles and hauling it all away
digging deep into the belly of the island,until only a question mark is left,
just enough land for a fringe of trees,
just enough to reveal a beach at summer’s end.

We put in the kayaks by the science museum
repurposed from a steam generating plant, now prettified
with a bright red smokestack. The water is smooth
as we paddle upstream, under bridges, past the gravel
conveyor, and pilings from the old days when logs tethered
in rafts waiting to be towed downstream to a mill.

Now there is clever graffiti and a few tents of the homeless
and Sunday cyclists on the bikepath, although a dull roar
belies the idyllic scene, droning from vehicles passing over the bridges
and down I-5 and McLoughlin boulevard, plus the occasional
closer whine of a waterskiing boat.

Nonetheless, it is lovely to be on the water in the sun.
An osprey circles, a big fish jumps, a dozen white sails
follow each other in a circle, surrounding an instructor,
it is enough to make anyone happy and I am
And yet, there is doubt that this redeemed waterway
is proof of recovery or an incongruency
in the greater story of human decay.

When we come back to the dock the same sunbather
is there as when we launched. He is thin and gray haired,
stretched out next to his bicycle, wearing only a thong.
He could be a nudist without a suitable beach, but his gaunt
skeleton reminds me of the depiction of Jesus taken down
from the cross, a warning
for the acts of contrition to come.

9/13/10

Getting Warmer

2010-09-11T15:26:00.000-07:00

Ribbon of Highway

Trees, rivers, clouds, mountains;
elements repeat in random combination
next to slippery lines of vehicles
following each other at furious speed
up and down the Northwest corridor.

There are big and little boxes of humanity
crowded around nodes of population, but the blur
of the drive between Portland and Vancouver
is still the leafy comforter of nature.

I calculate my carbon dioxide production
to be five hundred pounds there and back,
for reasons I call necessary, but I feel guilt.
It seems like plants will save us from ourselves
right up to the moment they can’t.

9/11/10

Late For The Sky

2010-09-01T23:12:00.000-07:00

Termination of the Biologic Imperative

The world has had its way with me,
a long descent under a parachute of experience,
billow of stories, and harness of expectation,
now collapsed, packed away, small as a tampon,
restored intrauterine, the end to all that.

The world has had its way with me
and I have stuck to my bargain, producing offspring
inoculating against despair, launching into air,
but now I am depleted, infected with age
ready to reconceive myself as a crone.

Soon my world will be riddles and weeds,
devoted to potions from rocks and animal cries
singing long songs of historical lament
tatting doilies of complicated verse.

The world is heedless of our slow passing,
we are embodied only to embody another
cognition mere hobby beside the genetic,
happiness a mutation of stubborn irrelevance.

9/2002 and 2010.

Ironing

2010-08-30T23:30:00.000-07:00

The use of an iron to smooth and flatten clothes is fast disappearing. I feel like an old lady as I spend ten minutes most mornings, ironing my clothes before work. However, I was surprised to find that a slightly older friend uses an even more archaic implement, a mangle, to dewrinkle her larger home fabrics. Her household revelation caused great interest on Facebook, though I doubt a rush of mangler companies started sending ads to her sidebar.

My use of the iron started early, when Mom assigned me pillowcases and napkins for my beginning attempts. I remember her equipment included a soda bottle filled with starch water, topped with a piece of nylon stocking secured with rubber bands. I think this was to sprinkle on the clothes to impart some stiffness to the cotton fabrics that constituted the majority of our clothes. Later, the invention of starch in a spray can replaced this homemade tool..

Mom must have done mountains of ironing, but early on, Dad decided to take his work shirts to the cleaners. Whether this was because of his dissatisfaction with her results or her complaint over the labor I don’t know. It always seemed a touch of fastidiousness on his part but led to a ready supply of smooth shirt cardboard for art projects.

Ironing has its pleasures, including the smell of hot cloth, the exciting steam expulsions and the heady risk of scorch. It also has its artistry; the rhythm of collar, cuffs, back and sides, the careful placement of crease and pleats and the expert adjustments of temperature for different kinds of cloth.

The younger generation rarely irons, which grows less and less necessary with all the various artificial fibers and no-iron finishes. There is also a lot of wrinkling that you can avoid with careful attention to the drying process. But ironing may just be another type of housework which has succumbed to the reality of the working woman, with little deleterious results. Unlike the demise of homecooking, I do not see a revival in well-ironed tea towels coming any time soon.

The Smell of Time

2010-08-25T23:11:00.000-07:00

We spent each summer of my childhood in Vermont, renting out our house near the beach on Long Island to finance the school vacation of my teacher father. The scramble to clean out the home for renters and at the same time pack clothes, cat and five children into one car for the seven hour trip north, was an operation we all suffered through. With last minute cleaning, and timing to miss the traffic that could ensnare us as we skirted the City, we often left in the evening and drove through the night.

When we got up to the Vermont house, we always set up the big tent in the backyard as an extra bedroom. With foam pads, inflatable mattresses and half a dozen flannel lined sleeping bags, there was room for as many of us who would choose the tent at night to sleep, even if it meant cold dew soaked feet when we ran back to the house for breakfast.

The tent was also a favorite place to nap after our midday swim at Fern Lake. Given that we lived in a place called Leicester Swamp on old maps, refuge from mosquitoes was required, at least until August. The smell of canvas in the sun, mixed with the tang of well-used bedding, together with the sap of white pine, and in some years the aroma of the summer horse we corralled right next to the tent, was a perfume I have never found again but can still remember. It was the smell of all the time in the world.

Up On the Mountain

2010-08-17T22:39:00.001-07:00

At 6:30 PM the sun slipped behind the shoulder of Mount Hood, and immediately the air cooled. A reminder that we depend on that star for everything. I put on a second layer of clothes and turn to making dinner, which here on Gnarl Ridge, a rib of volcanic gravel above treeline, means heating water to soak precooked food from town. The next two hours we watch the layers of hills between us and Mount Jefferson to the south, turn from green to orange to gray and finally disappear into twilight haze. A crescent moon emerges briefly and then sets behind the steep canyon carved by the Newton glacier snowmelt.

In the city, I notice the pieces of nature close at hand: whether the garden needs watering, and the crows flapping quietly to the mysterious place they all go in the last light. But here there is the collection of Clark’s nutcrackers saying their last throaty goodnights and then, almost immediately, the whole Milky Way appears. The sky seems both vast and too close over my head. For added punctuation, there are the exclamations of the Perseid meteor shower.

I do not sleep straight through the night as a certain amount of tossing and turning is expected on the ground. It is noisy as gusts of cold air rush down the mountain into the hotter valleys below. But at about five in the morning it starts getting light and I begin to enjoy sleeping in, drowsing from one hour to the next. At six the mountain turns pink. At seven the nutcrackers collect again for morning chatter. At eight o’clock it is starting to get warm and finally at nine Robert coaxes me out of the tent with coffee. I am never so lazy at home.

Because we are camped right off the Timberline trail, which circumnavigates the entire girth of the mountain, I expect to see fellow hikers on this weekend day. But I am surprised to hear quick footsteps outside the tent at 8:00AM. These are the first of several groups of folks running the entire trail. I am in awe of such prowess, but I am not so sure it is the best way to see the mountain.

Mount Hood is a young volcano and its upper reaches maintain snow year round. It is good to live close to a place that is still geologically new. It gives proof that the planet will wax and wane regardless of us and what we might do. There are plenty of people using the trails of Mount Hood, even on this far side from Portland, and I don’t think that can be a bad thing. But can we hold the awe of this geography as we go back to town in our carbon spitting machines? Just being here will not stop the glacier from melting. We will have to do more than keep a good thought.

Childish Pursuits

2010-08-12T23:19:00.000-07:00

There has been much ado around here about a little girl selling lemonade at a street fair who got shut down by the board of health. It’s one of those things that the news loves to highlight in order to test the polarity of the community. The anti-government folks can rail against the reach of petty bureaucracy. The pro-child faction can bemoan the loss of entrepreneurial opportunity for eight year olds, and the health conscious can shudder at the possibility for contagion. But it started me thinking about the things I did to make money as a child. Although there was formal employment that adults controlled, such as babysitting and paper routes, most of our enterprises were designed to extract money and goods from each other.

Back in the baby boom years of the sixties, we were old-fashioned enough to engage in games that rewarded success with the amassing of certain tangible, non-currency assets. So, there were the titans of jacks, marbles, and for the boys, baseball cards. These pursuits were usually specific to certain years and grades, but when the fever hit, like tulip fortunes in Holland, it was all we did, all the time.

Occasionally, a group of friends would band together to design an entertainment we called a carnival. We would set up games of chance, gather prizes, advertise, and open our doors in a backyard decorated with sheets and Christmas garlands and strings of lights, to help customers part with their money. I have no idea where the model for this came from, but it was effective in drawing participants, because who wouldn’t want to try for a chance to win a rubberband ball, or some really cool toy soldiers? Sometimes the carnival would offer lemonade or cookies, but adults were far away from these enterprises, Mom only noticing several days later that the packets of Kool-Aid she bought to last the week were nowhere to be found.

For many adults, we try our hardest to superimpose our recalled childhood on today’s children, with results such as the lemonade stand described above. It’s hard to know how to innoculate children with the freedom and curiosity we remember, and at the same time keep them absolutely safe.

Confusing Art With Words

2010-08-11T22:32:00.000-07:00

The Abstract Landscape (Workshop)

First a photo. A moment in a particular day when you exclaimed
and clicked your mnemonic device.
The image now resides pixillated and printed,
history devolving to this shot of life already lived.

Now, new instructions. Take the picture and see even less than you remember.
Instead of what journey led you to this view, see only a triangle of hill and rectangle of sky. Tetris them together on a sheet of paper with a line.

Then mix paint in colors you feel like today.
Notice everyone is choosing different hues.
Notice how we cannot bear to copy even the teacher.

Now there are the layers to put down, starting with a light wash,
working into dark writhing shapes of shade,
remembering the goal is to follow a semblance of geometry we stole
from the picture of a place at which we pressed pause. Or is it?

Then, this long afternoon of staring into pigment, trying to make splotches of color meaningful.
Yes, by all means draw a horizon for the eyes to travel toward.
Yes, remember the near is bright and far away is dim, and how amazing
when imagination highlights a place that should be hidden from view.

It was the line of trees when sun broke the fog.
It was a moment when the rising wave thinned and caught the sky.
It was the way a rock in the ocean turns every color before night claims it.
It was the purple space between the green trees.

If there is any message in this method it is that we have been so lazy
naming the color of things. Likewise, we rely on labels to tell us who we are.
Stripped away from context, in a random lovely place,
trying to mutate beauty into beauty,
we are all Van Gogh.

But back to the painting, paper heavy with experiments and disguises.
We labor on the dark pigments, we paddle in watery dazes.
We defiantly define flowers, trees and stones.

But as the day goes on we yearn for that dark horizon of rest,
seemingly reachable across a mirage of land or sea,
color always changing under an uncertain sky.

7/29/08

The Uses of Enchantment

2010-08-01T23:48:00.001-07:00

I just visited a place called the Enchanted Valley, in the Olympic National Park. Although I was skeptical of the enthusiastic name, the place was worthy. The long route to the valley was through a forest with gigantic old growth hemlock, Doug fir and cedar and spruce trees. Familiar with the history of rapacious logging in the Northwest, I am reverent of any and all trees wider than my outstretched arms and this forest was full of big ones. An old growth forest has just as many downed trees as standing ones and it was beautiful to see how a carpet of moss, oxalis and fern blanketed the fallen old ones like they had been gently put to bed.

We had three perfect days of sun and the vegetation was exhaling oxygen and moisture in clouds that made sweat run down our faces as we hiked. With an average of twelve feet of rain per year, the forest had plenty of water to transpire and we had to join in the water cycle. The park requires permits for backpacking and we declared that we would hike nine miles the first day and camp at Pyrites Creek. Because black bears are common, we felt we had to make it that far because the camping area had a bear wire to hang our food above the reach of the animals. Even though the elevation gain was not severe, we were very tired when we stumbled into camp at six in the evening. We were surprised and happy to see no one else was there.

We set up our tent on the gravel bar above the Quinault river. This river keeps a furious pace for sixty-five miles from the top of the snowfields, to Lake Quinault, where it empties and then on to the ocean. It is green and full of grey rocks and silt and whole trees that have toppled from the banks and propelled down the valley. The sounds of rushing water filled our ears and made it easy to sleep, even though the sky was light from the almost full moon.

The next day we had our coffee and granola and discovered that while hanging our food kept the bears away, it was an open invitation for mice. I can imagine their delight to scamper up the tree, across the wire and shimmy down to our bag full of goodies. Luckily they appeared to be satisfied with the granola and did not sample each and every ziplock bag.

After a lazy breakfast we hiked four more miles to the Enchanted Valley itself, eating lunch at the two story chalet, originally built as a lodge for hikers, now refurbished for use by summer rangers. Two men were winching a log slowly across the meadow in order to square it off for use as a beam for reconstruction. It looked like a fun job.

The valley has steep sides in a classic U-shape of retreating glaciers. There were many waterfalls, cascading hundreds of feet, fed by the snowfields on top. The floor of the valley was an open grassland, which made it easy to sit and and stare at the views. Although we went a mile or two beyond the lodge, we didn’t get close to the pass at the end of the valley, which would have given us vistas of the mountains all around.

Coming back to our campsite, we found other people camping close by. But we were tucked away enough that we only saw them down at the river, where we were all trying to dip into the cold water and wash away the sweat, without actually submersing. Although I generally like to talk to strangers when I travel, somehow the long hike to get here made me want to safeguard the distance I had put between me and the rest of humanity. Robert said the pleasantries as he hung our food, but I stayed with the tent.

The next day was a trek back the way we came, but our packs were lighter and we made it to the car by four in the afternoon. Although others told us about their sightings, we didn’t see any bears. And although elk trails intersected the hiking trail at numerous points, we didn’t see them either. But we did discover that the Olympics are very different from Oregon mountains, and a study of the map shows that the trail system could send us up and over many passes and into many valleys if we allowed the time.

I am always impressed by how different the day is, as soon as you leave the pavement and vehicles behind. Each lurch of elevation must be absorbed in the knees, but every turn reveals a view that is a reward. Contrast the almost effortless driving we do around the city, that only seems to produce boredom and frustration. Could it be that we need to work at getting there, to really appreciate the places we go to?

First Travels

2010-07-28T12:45:00.001-07:00

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

2010-07-13T22:44:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-07T22:41:00.001-07:00

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

2010-07-04T10:46:00.000-07:00

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.