Birthday Bingen-ing

June days are very long. The longest! Here in the north country, you can have two complete days in one if you want—if you have the energy. Which you def don't sometimes. But the reality is that it's very possible to navigate an entire workday, and then meet up with your friends after to drive 60 highway miles to a skatepark, where you can skate for several hours as evening sunbeams stab through purple cloud banks over rolling Tuscan-like hills in the background. Then, after final dusk, there's STILL time to head into town for late-night feasting, after which you can drive home under tiny, pale stars—pulling into town at a very respectable midnight. Tired as dogs. But accomplished-feeling, you know?

Again, you don't always have what it takes to make this kind of thing happen. But sometimes, it's the healthy thing to do. It's okay if it takes a special occasion to get there. Like, say, a special guy's birthday?

Out-of-Towners Mega Post

Hello from my desk. The parents and nephew have been visiting for the past week, and I just dropped them off curbside so they could run to catch their flight. Now it's time to reclaim my work/adult/real-life life.

For peeps who don't know, I'm a consummate Portland tour guide, and we did a crap-ton of stuff while they were in town (the below is a short list—should you decide to come visit, I shall design you a custom itinerary of your own). There were hours logged in the car; some traffic, some testy exchanges and almost-arguments, some 9-year-old empty-stomach-induced tears shed ... you know how it goes. What can I say? Your family drives you crazy—they are your closest, most fraught relationships. But for me, parting ways at the airport is always done with a heavy heart, and the house seems to echo with emptiness upon my return.

1. PSU farmers market: Parsley, potatoes, sugar snaps, and crimson piles of the sweetest, shyest strawberries you'll ever come to know.

2. Dad fixed everything: Peter Sherowski wrenched and tinkered throughout every spare moment. Thanks to him, my house works.

3. Horsetail falls hike: Drive on past the Multnomah Falls tour-bus crowds, hike up a different trail past a handful of lonesome waterfalls—one that you duck behind; the torrent of water pounding so loud, the soft mist so cool on your skin.

4. Impromptu Naked Bike Ride spectating from front yard: My dad, standing in the front yard wondering why there's 6,000 naked people riding bikes down the street in front of my house.

5. The Rose Garden at dusk: For my mom. A rose explosion in every hue. The last of the sunlight to illuminate them. The air smelling better than at any other time of day.

6. Sauvie Island beach day: Hot wind, cold cheese sandwiches, and a dip in the Columbia River as the freighters bob on by.

Chill Life Memories

When you are juggling self-employed computer-based hustling and house-is-a-construction-zone manual labor all week, you forget that there was once a Saturday not so long ago that you did nothing but hang around an empty elementary school with a bunch of other 30 (and 40!) year olds (and their dogs).

Moms, Then And Now

So, yeah, Mom's Day was last Sunday. I skyped with Nancy Sherowski in the afternoon whilst drinking milky coffee. And while I didn't participate in the huge outpouring ("outposting"?) of vintage mom pics on Instagram that day, I do, it occurs to me, have a vintage photograph of my mom (above!).

Okay, so let's look at this shot. How untroubled she looks. Carefree, would you call it? And that van?! Wood paneling, paisley curtains, comfy sleep nest ... Polerstuff wishes they could hashtag this van! Also, if you look long and hard, you might detect a pale cloud of weed smoke hovering in the air? Or maybe not. We can't know. Anyway, her brother, my uncle, sitting to her left, died this year—giving this picture more than ever, to me anyway, that sad air of something bygone.

“The days aren’t discarded or collected, they are bees that burned with sweetness or maddened the sting: the struggle continues, the journeys go and come between honey and pain. No, the net of years doesn’t unweave: there is no net.” – Pablo Neruda, Still Another Day

Little me! Mexico! (I had a good smile.) 

Waldeinsamkeit

Did you know that in German, there's a word for that feeling of being all alone in the woods? "Waldeinsamkeit" they call it. Lovely, no?