On Dog Mountain, With Dogs

Hiking's weird. What is it? Just walking. But it's nice. Especially when done alone, on a sun-blasted week day when everyone else is shackled to desks.

So I walked up the side of Dog Mountain yesterday out in the Gorge. Step after step, through the scrub oak, through the silent pines shading me like a canopy, through the scorched fields. The trail was very steep, and when we got to the top, we (me and the dogs) stood there gasping for air and staring east towards Idaho where smoke clung to the valleys and hid them.

Today, I can barely walk. I wonder if the dogs are sore?

Canyonlands Camp Out

On a whim, we stopped at Canyonlands and Moab on our way back from Colorado. This entailed camping on the rim of Dead Horse Point and swimming beneath petroglyphs in the cool, clear waters of Mill Creek. More than fun, it reminded me how exquisite and life affirming the desert can be.

Only about a half hour from Moab, Canyonlands National Park is an explosion of red and purple rock, sagebrush, dead and live pinions twisted by the wind. You come upon the canyons themselves suddenly—almost accidentally—after driving over a sprawling expanse of flat. A coupl’a Forest Service signs and then BOOM—you’re at the rim of an abyss. To watch the sun set over Canyonlands is to know light in every color of the spectrum and the most complete silence you’ve ever experienced.

Sunset over Dead Horse Point—a time for quiet introspection and feeling the vibrations of the planet.

Swimming in the shadow of red rock.

We wandered up Mill Creek Canyon in our bathing suits, diving into the river and toasting on the red rock at will.

A hand-made swimming hole with varying levels of cliff jumping, NBD.

Canylonlands camp coffee!

Steamy

100-degree heat is only acceptable if it lasts for no longer than 48 hours and then on the third morning you wake up to a cool cloud cover and a quiet kinda misting rain that's so light it's just barely, barely there. That's how we do it in Oregon, anyway.

Pile up on the couch with the AC unit on high.

Pug geezer and pit bull, both champion layer-arounders.

A bumble bee in my California fuscha. Everything I do in my flower garden is for those li'l buzzers—they're having a hard time of it, you know.

Summer Scenery

I've been wearing the same jean shorts for a week now. Why? Because it's August! It'll be fun when the heat breaks to remember about wearing pants again. The size of your wearable closet, like, doubles once pants get thrown back in the mix. But we're not there yet, you guys.

So, this weekend: three rivers in three days. Or, two rivers, three spots, if you want to be technical. And real swimming, where you dive in glide under the surface for a while—not just paddling on the top with your sunglasses on and not getting your hair wet.

Actually, Saturday on the Sandy got a little wild. Lance and I tried to be lazy and forge down river to find our friends instead of going back up the trail and around. Have you seen The River Wild? It was kinda like that, without the Kevin Bacon and John C Reilly characters trying to kill us. We definitely scaled cliff walls. I definitely had to save frantic li'l Lefty from getting swept away by jamming my feet in some rocks and and bear-hugging him against the raging current. And we never did make it down to our friends. But that's okay, it was kind of fun after the fact—a little adventure that bonded the three of us.

The road home from the river. I could live right there, on that farm with the neat row of poplars or whatever they are and those golden fields spreading out all around. I mean, right?!

I think you can tell by this picture what the heat feels like, how it sorta drains everything of color and you just scurry from shadow to shadow until there's nothin to do but lay around and pant.

But: imagine if you had a big hairy suit you could never take off? What then? Just find a shady spot and nest.

Sun Down Time

For various reasons I won't mention here, I've found myself alone out in the world for about one hour per evening, right around sunset, and I've found that I don't want to sit at home (although my backyard IS one of the best places on earth). Instead,  I'll just strike out in the car until I come to somewhere nice, and then I'll get out and wander.

I've found that all sorts of people like to be out at sunset doing this exact thing—that we all kind of converge on these lovely parks and other spaces our city has constructed for us, and we talk in hushed tones or don't talk, and we watch as the light turns from white to gold to amber/honey, and, and, and, then it's over and we all go home.