The Northwest-est
Piney’s gone. There, I said it. He’s on the other side. I’ll tell you more about it sometime, but for now I thought I’d get out of town. Get moving. Move on. I never did know anything else to do.
In our ambition to flee, we thought about driving south to California—but ended up heading north and west—the northwest-est—to the Olympic Peninsula. Here, is where the trees are so old and tall they meet in a perfect V overtop the road. Here, is where arctic oceans end in glassy bays at the feet of a razor-sharp range. Here, depending on who you are, is the promise land.
Pic by Mark.
Camping without my dog, or any dog (who is “my dog” anymore? I’ve had many …) was strange. After making camp, I didn’t have anything to do, no one to keep an eye on or worry about (except Mark, and he doesn’t need eyes keeping on him). I just sat in the sun and drank wine and read while the tide rushed in. Darkness fell, the stars came out—stark, distant, beautiful. When I looked up, a vast loneliness harpooned my soul. Guys, I’ve always been searching for something and never really found it. Maybe it’s the big “why.” Maybe it’s the definition of “me.” Having no real answers for you, I do know that the path to self discovery is a way full of desolate wonder. I leaned in and stoked the fire.
Pic by Mark.
Pic by Mark.
Sunday morning we awoke to whale spouts past the breakers and a pale, slippery head emerging from the sea. Rising and falling. Curious, but not too curious. An intelligent eye looking solemnly our way. I don’t have particularly eloquent words for what it feels like to see and be seen by a whale. Special? We felt special. It was everything you could hope for. We packed up and went home.
Pic by Mark.
Where-Ness
A while back after my boss returned from sabbatical in Europe, we had a conversation about the thing we really remember and hope for from a trip. Those encounters of “where-ness.” This has nothing to do with all the stuff you saw or plans you made, but rather a single experience—often just a flash—where you felt like you were an authentic part of a place.
He told of a sunset walk through Madrid with his wife, the air all warm and glowy pink, when they sauntered into a medieval square and were greeted by the student choir sitting on the fountain steps singing “Hey Jude.” The tune rose and fell as the pigeons flapped for scraps, and people milled around in a relaxed fashion—on their way home from work or out for an aperitif.
This moment had a live-in magic, and he thought he might remember it forever—or for a long time at least, long after he forgot the train rides and museums tickets.
It got me to thinking about trips of my own. What were the highlights? The squishy candy middles?
My rally through Canada last summer was full of them. Like: our first morning in Nelson—a laidback mountain town on a cold-water lake. My old friend Mark who lives in Nelson advised us on a morning wander. “Hike up the Pulpit early before it gets too hot,” he told us and we listened. Straight from the café with paper cups of dark roast still in our hands, we began our ascent on a morning of dazzling heat and beauty. The trail to the Pulpit—a big rock looming on high over the town and lake—was essentially just a steep set of stairs carved into a plummeting hillside. We climbed and climbed. Soon we were high on caffeine and lung-fulls of warm, tree-scented air. I nabbed a sweet, mealy saskatoon berry and popped it in my mouth. The temperature rose. We sweated into our tee shirts. Less than an hour later, we emerged onto the precarious sun-washed rock AKA my forever happy place. Overhead, bluer than blue sky. To either horizon, steep green valleys. Directly below, the city and of course the lake—calling us back down for an afternoon swim.
Skate Anthropology
Apropos of nothing:
I wanted to like the above short vid about pro skater Nora Vasconcellos, but kinda didn't. Mostly because of how much its narrative was about what some iconic white men think about her skating rather than actually about her skating. (Elissa Steamer was briefly interviewed but had nothing to say about Nora specifically.) Also: it's 2018 do we really still have to make movies about "what it's like to be a girl in skateboarding"?
I guess so. Sure, a men-curated movie for the men-dominated culture—it makes sense. But is it progressive? Is it revolutionary? Is it punk rock? No. It would be cool to get away from that "female skateboarder" thinking and celebrate (and support) Nora, and all the rest of us, simply as "skateboarders." That's what we are?
I'm psyched that Adidas has a woman on their global team now. But IT'S ONLY ONE. One skater. One movie. Should we take our meager offerings and be happy with them? No. If we continue replicating the hegemony through skate movies, skate ads, skate product—and all the rest—by focusing the apex of accepted skate awesomeness on the opinion/control of men, then we continue to limit skateboard society from growing and evolving. Toward community. Toward creativity. Toward even more future awesomeness.
And any woman who rolls 4 wheels will tell you the patriarchy is still thriving out there in skate-land. From pointed disrespects coming out of bro culture and the boys' club to softer daily annoyances, like the amount of times I get asked by men things like, "How long have you been skating?" Do any of my tight skater boiz get asked that? No. The condescension comes through loud a clear.
Anywayayayayay, I am happy for Nora out there getting that money, getting that movie, getting to skate for a living and getting to be herself ... whatever that looks like—cool, creative, weird, talented, female, free. Let's keep it going. Let's skate as much as possible. Let's have the most fun possible. Let's collaborate to smash the state and create room for groundbreaking new possibilities, like, say, the expectation that women could fuel skate culture as much as men do.
We Do
As you may know, my guy gave me a sparkly ring last spring and asked me to be his wife. Eeeek! I didn't blast the info via text or on social medias. It felt like pretty private news? I also enjoyed getting to bask in my friends' surprise when I told them in person one by one. An unscripted facial expression from a bud—it's the emoji of olden days.
Mark grew up riding bmx bikes, heckling and getting heckled on the streets of chowda-town, Boston. Behind the wheel, he'll flip off five different people on a drive to the grocery store—but he's the gentlest creature I know. The calm and ease he brings to his days is everything I want to live and be good at. I like how I can be stomping around in the fugue state of a bad mood and he just smiles and pats me on the head like, "Hush."
We've bounced around everywhere from B.C. to Portugal. We've almost died together on an icy highway. We've lost our little pup too soon and cried together. We've hiked stairways to heaven in the high alpine, built sturdy cedar fences in the summer heat, slept under desert stars and shivered in hypothermic snow caves together ...
I'm really excited to marry this guy in June.
Splitting Up
I procured a split board in the fall to reconnect with my love for winter snowboarding. In general I'm retired from Oregon resort riding. It doesn't give me what I need and so I stopped thinking about it—stopped setting aside time for it.
With skins, poles and a dog, I can now explore in the deep snow heretofore only post-hole-able hinterlands. I went out to do that for the first time a few weeks ago, and the simplicity of it made me very happy. It felt so much more like "play" than any snowboarding I've done recently. Free from set agenda and people, from reliance on chairlifts or runs. Just me and a quiet ecosystem of powder dollops. And it was fabulous exercise. My body grew warm and my lungs worked hard. My face steamed into my goggles, and I sent a prayer up into the trees that my muscles would continue working, my heart keep pumping. They did. It did!
At the top—which wasn't even the top but an unassuming pause point where we decided to strap in and send it—I felt that old excited flutter for the descent. An old forgotten feeling. And just like that I was off, dipping through the trees with the dog hot on my tail.
I've long suspected but never really known until now—splitboarding is the winter recreation of simple people like myself. It's been warm here in town, but let it keep snowing up at altitude, so we can all get up and get out just one, maybe two more times.