Memorial Day Camp Out
What is it about camping? You come home feeling exhausted but refreshed, dirty but clean. Existentially clean, maybe? I dunno.
Anyway, I went camping and swimming in the wilds of Oregon this weekend. "Swimming" is a strong term. I dove into the glacial river water and then immediately scrambled back to shore. The sun was hot by day, and the fire was hot by night. There was zero cell service anywhere. Life, for a minute there, was pretty dialed in.
I believe in the alchemy of a campsite—the fire, with its pine-scented smoke; the tent, with its blustery-thin walls (which keep out the rain but not, thankfully, the sound of babbling brooks!); the dirt; the sunset; the sooty rocks you toast your bagels on; all the pure clean time spent under the great, wide sky. Put together, there's a magic to this stuff that's, well, the province of summer.
The Clackamas River Valley is a site to behold.
Here's to chasing sticks around your own private swimming hole.
Dudes bein' dudes.
As a kid, one of my favorite things about swimming was when I got out of the water all shivery, and then my mommy wrapped me in a big ol' warm towel and dried me off.
B.C. Or Bust
It's May and the sun is out. More than out—we've got big-boy summer here. Because adventure was calling, I drove (WAY, WAY) up north last weekend to Tofino, B.C.—a small, super laid-back surf town on the fingertip of a peninsula pointing nonchalantly out into the Pacific off Vancouver Island.
It's hard to articulate how beautiful this place is. I mean I live in a scenic river town in the shadow of a volcano—I'm no stranger to sweeping vistas. But Vancouver Island is something else. Like, from a fairy tale. Snow-tipped fjords diving into arctic waters. Mirror-smooth lakes awash in profound silence. Sunsets to the West. Foggy harbors to the East. Skateparks. Surf breaks. Sea planes buzzing in and out. I couldn't believe any of it.
But. But! Tofino is very hard to get to. While not that far as the crow flies, the journey involves boat rides and crazy roads. Hours stack onto hours as you drive 25 miles an hour around hairpin turns. And the ferries are impossibly scheduled, either leaving at the crack of dawn or timed to deposit you inconveniently straight into big-city traffic.
Ah, but that's okay. All is as it should be. You don't take the easy way to a place like this. Fairytale lands, well, they have to be earned—everyone knows this.
We were hours from Tofino still, but the sun was shining and there was a lake to our left. Pretty okay first swim of the season.
Mark surfed the cruisey longboard waves. Me? I just polar-beared it and dove straight in. Lefty tried to "save" me but only managed to half drown in the crashing whitewater.
Golden hour with an empty skatepark and islands shrouded in mist.
We saw a tree that was a sapling during Marco Polo's day. The Pacific Rim rainforest has stories to tell.
On a boat! Looking back at the Olympics and Port Angeles. Not ugly.
Gets You High
Busy as heck around here. Lots of work. For money. Typing words to tell stories that help people sell things. It's what I do when I'm not doing all the other things that don't make anybody any money, least of all me.
Aaaanyway, about last Thursday: the sun came out and it was sincerely warm, summerish even. The fine weather was palpable everywhere in the building—people were floating around flushed, the victims of spring fever. Work became impossible. We sat on the building stoop in shafts of sunlight listening to the sitar players riffing in the park. Life was grand.
It's funny. You can do a lot of things to try to control your mood. Exercise. Nutrition. Diet and discipline. Drugs, alcohol, or lack thereof. But none of that stuff really gets me high quite like the first serious blue day after months of bonafide darkness.
Positively October
The first week of October, already gone. And I turned 30 something last week. It was the loveliest day, I barely did a thing. Worked a little, skated a little, laid on the deck in the sun with the cat.
As I got to reminiscing on the past year, I realized something: this summer was the very best summer of my life. At least in recent memory. In non little kid memory. It came on hot and fast. We went swimming every weekend. I skated a ton and went out a ton—on warm Saturday nights, always pedaling my bike down Alameda Street, headed toward Alberta, toward friends, toward tacos. Brooding was near non existent, and wasted angst was kept to a minimum. It was great, I did what I wanted ... which is all you could ever really ask for in a summer.
Anyway, it should make all y'all 20 somethings glad to know. Things never dry up. There's always more. Nope, no shortage of bounty as the years go on. Trying to say the good times will be over at such and such an age—hey that's just a myth we keep telling ourselves.
2 Things
R.I.P. Junk Spot: As stated elsewhere, our friend Nick and some other guys had this rad, renegade skate spot in New Jersey going. It was there, now it's gone. Plowed by a landowner-hired thug the other day. I was lucky enough to slash it in May when I went through NYC ... The streets really are ever changing—don't take anything for granted.
Bye, Summer: Last Saturday was like summer's last stand. 85 in the shade. We all went to the beach, even the babies and dogs, and sent off the warm months with a beer and a swim.
