Crispy

Portland cold snap! Frosty mornings make you feel alive. And very dark, foggy nights make the world seem new and peculiar. Like, I drove home from Commonwealth late last night through the deepest foggy soup. Traffic lights hovered inside vapor halos and the streets—even right near my house—looked spooky and unfamiliar. I went inside and turned the heat on, but I left the lights low and peered out the window at the ghostly night.

Yule Time

Went back to my place of birth in Colorado for the holidays, and I needed it more than ever. To walk out on the bluff beside my parents house, sage brush dolloped with fresh snow everywhere and the peaks across the valley shrouded in white, disappearing and then reappearing, a sign of very cold air, and impending snow. To talk seriously with nephew Patrick about Gaboon Vipers and animals that start with the letter U. To curl up in my bed at the top of the house and lay there in the dark watching the moonlight on the snow and the tiny lights of faraway snowcats, 10 miles up the valley at the ski resort, going up and down restoring order to the slopes, until I fall asleep and then the dawn breaks all cold and blue.

"Christmas morning" started at 6:30 a.m.—as it often does with a kid in the house, but it wasn't terrible getting up in the dark to tear up colored paper over steaming coffee.

And for Christmas—powder. A powder day with my dad, actually. How many of these I've had in my life, I can't be sure, but they're very valuable. It really was a kinda magical morning, I won't lie—the light sparkling off every single thing, including ice crystals hovering in the air shining like diamonds in the shafts of sunlight.

I grew up driving in the snow ... but fuck THIS!

Woodsy

Two dogs, two people, two days in the Central Oregon forest. You live cleaner with a view like this out your window, you wanna wake up early just so you can walk in the woods and smell those morning smells—deep pine and dirt all sharpened by the cold air.

But the dogs, Lefty and his brother Duke (who we borrowed from his family for the trip), had the most fun. I like the way they rip it all fast for the sheer pleasure in running when they encounter a wide open space—bursting with joy and a kinda existential wild animal-ness. I watch that and it makes me feel good to be alive.

At night, this festive little bridge lit up the river in front of the cabin, and I couldn't help but feel like, with a thick blanket of snow, this might be the very bridge St. Nicholas himself would trudge across with a coal lantern and big burlap sack. You never know ...

Autumn-esque

Hallo hallo! Don't ya just love fall? Not because of pumpkin patches or apple cider or anything—just the the colors and the drama with the weathers and stuff. Time is marked by the first time you turn your heat on for the year, which was yesterday, and the first time you make a fire in the fireplace—also yesterday.

We went out to the Manzanita this weekend for Lance's mom's birthday and took lots of walks along the Pacific Ocean, watching the clouds roll around and the spray fly up against the rocks.

Family pic: the Normines and me (I'm the one holding the heavy pink stuffed animal that's actually a baby. Love you, Teags!).

Something Different

I have no love for my lawn, but this is the driest, most colorless and dust-clogged box of tinder it has ever been. I am ready for a change. Let's wake up to rain rattling the gutter. Let's put our old winter jackets on and find a fiver in the pocket from the last time we wore them.