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.

Stuff To Do In The Summer

We’re already in the soft part of summer. Thoughts, cool and smooth like marbles, have been rolling around my mind. I have not written any of it down. I’ve worked hard to be flagrantly selfish with my time really. The other seasons are fine for meeting expectations but when the air is all sweet and warm you should do exactly what you want.

I listened to a radio interview recently with a man named Ross Gay, who spent a year writing an essay every day about all the small things in life that delight him. Loitering at a cafe. A kind exchange with your boss. The fore-knowledge of the donut you’re about to procure and eat. The book is pragmatically titled The Book Of Delights. How lovely! I haven’t read it yet but I’m inspired by the idea. In the interview, Gay talked about how when you start noticing everyday things that delight you, you gain an aptitude for it. It’s like building a muscle. Doing sit-ups is always hard until one day it isn’t.

A couple weeks ago Mark and I drove to Colorado. We spent most of our time in the mountains at elevations that left us seeing stars, forever gasping and head rushing. I grew up way up there and it made my primal self feel like itself once again to be walking through all those rustling-leafed aspen glades. Summer vacation — more specifically the ability to take a summer vacation — is no doubt a delight of the highest order. But the trip called forth plenty of tiny delights — the everyday kind that could and should make up my own Book Of Delights.

Like crawling in the tent with the dog and cozying our way through a wicked afternoon thunder storm. Unsettled air is a precious commodity. You can soak in the wild ions and feel electrified. As the booms got louder, Jedda’s ears rotated like satellite dishes and her eyes grew round. We all inched a little closer. An hour later, a sunbeam shot through the tent and we knew it was over.

Like drinking a beer in the afternoon with my mom. In the heat and sun, over food-truck Mexican, there is no urgency and the vibe is authentic celebratory relaxation and the conversation meanders in an inspired way.

Like watching the sun rise over an empty meadow. The wall of golden light moves like a whisper across the grass, setting the seedpods on fire as it goes. You keep very quiet as you watch. This process is a touch spiritual, a tad mystical. You feel like you’re seeing behind the curtain, glimpsing the ineffable. Some secret miracle. And just like that it’s daytime.

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!

What I Can’t Wait For

Stranger Things 3: While other people got buzzed for Black Mirror or West World, I secretly pined for the next season of ST. This is a wantable series for me because it artfully blends nostalgia and humor and the otherworld, plus that vibe that the kids are the real heroes. Which is awesome since we all feel like kids inside, and we all quietly know that we are the real heroes. Also, I like how each series is set against the backdrop of a holiday (first season, it was Christmas, season 2, Halloween and now, the 4th of July). This only serves to heighten our nostalgia to a feverish pitch. 

Going Back To Bend: I will tell you a secret. Late at night, when I can’t sleep because my brain is washing on high-spin-cycle, I used to count carefully backward from 100 imagining each number in a different dazzling color. Lately though I’ve been calming my neurons with a meticulous fantasy about finishing the fence on our land near Bend. Let the sun wash over me. Use the post hole digger to pull out the sandy clods. Smell the sap and dirt. Pull a post from the pile and place it in the hole. Level it while Mark pours in the concrete. Feel satisfied. Dozens of those on down the line. Then it’s back to the beginning for the brackets and cross beams, and then the cedar panels, one by one by one by … 

Catskill Weekend Of Love

I read somewhere that humans are "mostly restlessness and empty space." The lucky thing is to find someone great who calms you down and fills you up, and spend as much time with them as possible, and come away renewed. That's how my friends Liane and Brian are.

Last weekend, we hopped an early flight to Newark, NJ and skirted around New York City, headed North into the soft, deep forests of the Catskill Mountain Range. The purpose of this journey was to watch Liane and Brian get married in front of a lake that perfectly reflects the sky.

We stayed on the top floor of a 200-year-old farm house in Roscoe, New York—also known as Trout Town USA. Also known as the locale where Dirty Dancing was filmed. Roscoe, home to corn fields and shallow, sparkling rivers. Home to tomato vines and cheesemongers. Home to pastoral backdrops bursting with deciduous beauty.

I don't pretend to understand love. It's not something you can buy, sell or own. It's not yours, it's not mine. I know it when I see it, though. And last weekend, it was everywhere.