New Year Energy

On the winter solstice of 2020, I was driving through the dusk-purpling snow of northern Utah. The way was cold and calm, lit by Saturn and Jupiter — so close in the Southwest sky that if you squinted they became one doubly bright celestial body. An auspicious alignment: the “Christmas Star” of lore and legend. 

It got me thinking about those Three Wise Men who used the same chilly light to find their way across the desert in Jordan. “Good news!” they proclaimed when they saw the “star,” or so the story goes. I was looking for my own good news in this dark season, and I remembered that the Three Wise Men, as well as The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (which also features the Christmas Star), teach of reprioritization and hope. A big ol’ lesson of 2020.

After a hermetically sealed drive through the Western United States, I spent the winter holiday season in Colorado with my family. It filled up the reserves. It provided the change of venue I needed — out from under the Willamette River Valley rain cloud where it can get dark, too dark to see at times.

The calling of our generation is no longer the perfectly orchestrated Instagram post. Look I’m just a hypocrite like everyone else but on my better days I’m here for the radical connection. Not to stay locked away, but rather to show up. My family bond has never felt tighter. My connection to the world has never felt weightier. When I meditate once or twice a week at five minutes a pop (no mindfulness high horse here, just an attempt-at-an-examined-life mini pony), I try to send it out to everyone I can think of. “It” being vibes. “It” being rays from the core of my tissue. “It” coming from my biggest artery — straight to you. 

Dylan once said: When you’re surrounded by love, you can do anything. 

It’s the new year and I want to do something. 

Promise Of The West

In the first week of July, the days were dull and gray. I rarely left the house. Reading. Typing. Peering out the window. Watching a fine rain fall straight down, in July. Through the window of my soul — I mean phone — I glimpsed blue skies in the Colorado Rockies. My mom and sister, Nancy and Melissa, out for a walk and the dog pouncing through sage brush behind them. Scrolling further, I spied old friends cooling off in cold-water granite cauldrons lost in the hills outside Los Angeles. Summer life was happening, but not here. 

Luckily, I'd planned a trip. Call it summer vacation. Call it an escape from the specific gauzy inertia of extended quarantine — where days drag painfully slow but also blend together until suddenly you look at the date and you’ve lost entire weeks to a routine of no routine at all.

I needed newness more this July then I have any of the other Julys (or Junes, or Januarys — really any of the months you might suggest). Experiencing newness is the best way I know to slow down time’s passage and keep my mental range of motion. When you explore new paths, your brain creates new pathways. This has always been true. Not just a 2020 truth.

So in search of rich, striking memories, Mark and I stuffed the Nissan Titan full of camping gear and drove into cowboy country. Montana. Idaho. Landscapes that hold the promise of the West. That make you feel small, what Kerouac called an “eager insignificance.”

Regarding traveling during a pandemic, it was fine. We were masked up in the presence of humans, but in general looking to get away from people, to get out and contemplate geology, investigate botony, conjecture about astronomy. I can’t and won’t forget the shooting star that harpooned the sky while I crouched and quietly tree-peed in the middle of the night on the edge of that soft-water, glacier-scraping mountain lake.

Live Deliciously

Sitting at my desk again and thankful that I have work to shape my hours.

On the scrolling platforms, everyone’s sharing their highlights from the last decade. A lot of these posts begin with “The last decade was full of transition, of highs and lows…” (hint: THEY ALL ARE). That’s time. It’s just transition — a pile of pearls falling through your fingers. 

Calendar-wise, the 1990s was my teens, the 2000s was my 20s, the 2010s was my 30s. It’s tidy the way it turned out — and helpful for recollecting, too. 

When I look back I don’t blame myself for anything I did in the 90s. Lil’ me did my best with what I had on offer — access to rugged wilderness, MTV and a high-octane hormone-flooded brain. 

My 20s and 30s were cool; I wasted too much time, though. I spent whole hours and days building barriers and spiraling away from my authentic self.  

Now, as I enter my fourth decade I’m fiercer and softer than ever. I don’t “give a shit” but I also cry when grizzly bears fight on the nature shows cuz I want them both to live and “be alright.” 

Today, I hold my self ruthlessly responsible for every second lady time drops in my supplicant palms. Not like I need to be busy all the time; I see it more from a value perspective. There are times when “doing” is the worst thing you can do. 

“WOULDST THOU WANT TO LIVE DELICIOUSLY?” Asks Black Phillip, tempting an innocent lass, in that movie The Witch.

Yes, yes, yes! That’s all I’m ever trying to do. 

Extra-Order Happiness

At barely-any-cabs-left o’clock last Wednesday I flew home from a work trip to Calgary, and then Thursday was Mark’s birthday, and on Friday we left our home and sailed the sun washed pavement up north into Washington.

Saturday afternoon, the kind of dry heat that makes you red cheeks and sun stroked, but the second you stop in the shade you’re perfectly cool. Having hiked a very steep trail for a few hours in the morning, having passed through fields of lupine and Indian paintbrush and drunk from ice-fed streams, we walked into the town of Leavenworth while a lonesome accordion played. Stopping at an open air beer garden, we ordered ale and Field Roast.

Is there any better way to feel than a three sip buzz on an empty stomach on a sunny day with food on the way? Additionally, a breeze we could not feel from our perch on the deck blew clouds of cottonwood fluff across the sky. It was snow-globe gorgeous and we were perfectly dry-sweat tired and that’s when a kind of happiness of a higher order — not at all your average everyday joy — fell upon us as we sat there.

Happy birthday Mark!

Rulebreaker

Breaking your arm is physically risky, but I would recommend it. This is a question of embracing the darkness to know the light. If all it takes to worship the wonders of our two hands, which are miraculously crafted to do everything from caress your lover to caress your keyboard. Button your jeans. Untwist the olive jar. Rip open the paper enclosing a tea bag. Much less sports — skateboarding with friends and riding bikes all over town. Much less homesteading — digging holes in the forest and putting fenceposts in. If what it takes to appreciate the wild joy of all that is a fracture of the right radius — I’ll do it.

In other news, I can still walk, and the trees are in bloom.