Overnight On The Mountain
Dark was the morning we loaded the car and drove south through Eugene, through Oakridge, and up the side of Warner Mountain until we reached the deep snow. Ten miles of freshly powdered road separated us from the Warner Mtn. Fire Lookout, a cozy cabin atop stilts atop a ridge with 360 views of the Cascade Range. We strapped into our split boards and swished off into oblivion.
Fast forward through 8 hours of rugged uphill ascent, and we were still on that trail. It was pitch dark. The storm raged. Mark was slurring his speech, suffering from severe exhaustion. In the light from my headlamp, the tracks of the people who'd skied out earlier that day were buried, wiped from existence by snow and wind. This blizzard of March 5th, it wasn't half hearted—but brave and full of force.
It's a funny thing, memory. Already what happened is all jumbled up in my mind. I remember a moment when I realized something was wrong with Mark. It's really hard to see someone who's always very strong, always taking care of you, suddenly need help. It hit me over the head—it was time to stop, stop motivating, stop rallying. We had to go into survival mode, which meant digging some form of shelter and staying put. And—not kidding—calling 911. Yep, only 1.5 miles from our cozy cabin destination, we were immobilized by exhaustion, by darkness, and by the storm.
We shimmied into the area under a tree well, threw down a sleeping bag, sat down, and then put another sleeping bag over us. This is making it sound warmer than it was. We were soaked to the core from sweating and from the storm. We were very, very cold. Cold is an understatement. Drifting in and out of consciousness, we shivered violently from 8 pm until 4 a.m., when, thinking I was hallucinating, I saw the lights from the Search And Rescue snow cat.
What we did wrong.
-We had too much stuff. Just because you're going to a cabin, doesn't mean you need to bring your 700 page book. If I did again, I'd go so much lighter, so much leaner.
-We brought a 4 month old puppy. Sure, he's part Malamute. But he's a freaking baby. We were prepared for him not making the whole trek—we just weren't prepared for the extra strain pulling a 30+ pound pup in a sled would put on Mark.
-We didn't eat. We had plenty of food, but not super accessible trail snacks to keep us super fueled up. We were prob burning thousands of calories, but we kept thinking, we gotta just GET THERE! Turns out, taking care of yourself is more important than anything.
-We didn't turn back when we maybe thought we should. My new mantra—it's okay to quit!
What went wrong.
-There was (way) more snow than expected. The park ranger had told us the trail would be packed by snowmobiles, but instead, we were skinning through feet of fresh. This was a game changer.
-The GPS made us look closer than we were to the destination. There was a tragic moment just before dark when we made a final push, thinking we were 2 miles away, and then saw a road sign that read, "Warner Mountain Lookout, 3.7 miles." FLlksjdfla;jksdbuasdfja;sjkdgjl;dajsg!!!!!!!
How we got so fucking lucky.
-Like a ghost, 1 bar of LTE service shivered in and out of my phone. Just enough to get some calls off to 911 and text my mom our location.
-The sheriff's department was able to get a snow cat sent up from Roseberg. It was hours away. It took, literally, all night—but the cat was everything. It got us out of there in 25 minutes flat. All hail volunteer Search and Rescue crews, everywhere!
Adventures In Meditation
Until late December, I'd never meditated. I'd been a longtime supporter of mediative THINGS—walking, gardening, cooking. But, let's be clear, meditative is not meditating.
Meditation is really hard! Have you tried it? Do you agree? It forces you to reckon with your total mess of a brain. As a child of the 80s, I went to swimming lessons and piano class—but no one ever taught me how to control my thoughts and emotions. This is a thing. A skill you can hone through hours and days and weeks of, just, sitting and focusing. Who would've thought, as you get older, that the secret to life is not in adding things—knowledge, skills, experience, friends—but rather in taking things away, stripping down existence to its very simplest form.
Anyway, I'm terrible at it. Like a tot with training wheels, I'm doing guided meditations that I've downloaded to my phone. My favorite is the one where you simply sit and focus on the space between your thoughts. The SPACE! It's expansive. On good days, I can rise right up into it. Eventually, perhaps when I'm all gray, perhaps when I'm living atop a Tibetan peak, I'll be able to turn my mind on and off at will. Mind control. How cool.
Anyway, daily meditation is not glamorous. It's another thing on the to-do list. Plus my knees always hurt after I sit there for a while. Still, the work is important—as necessary as eating and sleeping. And later, when the stress runs high and the world roils, I've got a surefire way to dial it all down.
Favorites 12.20.16
Road trips over airports. I'm elated to be driving to Colorado for Christmas instead of flying there. It's a long drive. But think about the airport! The airport, during the holidays. There's a complex equation that sums up time spent vs. worth. For plane travel, you have to factor in bag-check lines, security lines, boarding lines, weather delays, lines to get coffee, lines to buy expensive, poorly tasting snacks, lines for the bathroom, lines for baggage claim, lines for the airport bus. Ugh. This year, though, we shall allocate between 17 & 18 hours to: podcasts, Leonard Cohen tunes, conversation, and driving through the snowy world being masters of our own destiny.
Kite Hill Cream Cheese: Made, not of milk, but of almonds. Typically, I turn my head at fake cream cheese. It usually tastes off. Is it the emulsifiers? I dunno. But not this delicate, artisanal stuff. It's rich and supple, saturated with the perfume of green meadows and soft-petaled flowers. Spread on toast, it has the power to save the world I'm pretty sure.
The puppy in the morning time. If you have a dog, then you know that they are inarguably at their cutest first thing in the morning. Spunky. Snuggly. Happy to meet the new day. Now take a puppy and times that by about 1 million.
Hunt For The Wilderpeople: Taika Waititi always kills it. This film is mad and rambling. It's so warm. So clever. And gah, Sam Neill! Anyway, I strongly advise you to watch the movie and feel good.
3 Things
The pup not being a baby puppy anymore. Seemingly overnight, but really over the span of 5 weeks, Durango hath transformed from a shy little fur piglet into a lanky teenager with too-big ears and paws. His fear of road noise? Gone, and he now walks along on the leash just fine. A V-like-1000 engine Fedex truck revved past us as loud as could be, and he didn't even care. Just looked the other way and sniffed the wind. Battles, won! But new struggles arise daily. We are currently fighting the Battle Of The Couch. I will keep you posted on the latest developments from this disputed territory.
Thursday happened. Thanksgiving came and went, and all it meant to me was a four-day weekend (yay!). In observance, I promptly turned my brain off. Besides that though, I never have much planned for these eating holidays. For starters, I'm just whatever about Thanksgiving food. As a bonafide non-carnivore, I haven't chomped on turkey in years. And I'm risking work-place discrimination here to proclaim that my aversion to mashed potatoes persists. Still! My lovely friends came over, and the kitchen filled up with people, and a lot laughter happened, much of it at the puppy, who boinged around in a fugue state—completely high on the smells of the feast.
Captain Fantastic. A film worth your time. Despite watching the entire thing, I never did figure out what "type" of movie this is. I like that—a refusal to be predictable. Plus, peep out those clips of Portland!
3 Things
Stranger Things: A new throwback sci-fi for all you E.T. & X Files fans out there. It gets me scared, but it also makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside just like all really great 80s movies do to all humans who grew up wearing velour sweatpants and drinking Tang in the 80s.
Yerba mate: A mild cocaine of sorts for work-day doldrums. I can get lit on a mug of this, plug in Explosions In The Sky, and crush 3 hours of product copy. Magically, I will still be able to sleep later. It's cool.
New roommate: After what amounts to years of living alone, the struggle to not become curmudgeonly was real. But turns out, having someone at the house when you get home is quite lovely, because then that someone is around to open stuck jars of jam, and there's someone to drink wine with as the light falls, and there's someone for Lefty to run and find in hopes of protection from being given a bath—which he won't get because, little does Lefty know, that someone is a double agent who works for me. Hah!
