Operation Shasta Lake

Today I'm thinking about Shasta Lake. It's a bright-blue splash of water on the border of Oregon and California. Maybe you've glimpsed it on your way up or down I-5?

Anyway, the above picture popped up in my Insta feed last week (via natgeo). Due to drought, the lake's ancient submerged stumps now know sunshine again after 70 years under water. It's an odd scene—very empty.

It reminded me of a spring trip I took two years ago, when I left Portland and drove south with a cooler full of bread and brie—down across the flats of Salem and Eugene, up through the creaking trees of Grants Pass, down onto the parched plains of Redding and out onto the gray-green olive groves north of Sacramento. It was a journey involving pick ups and drop offs and one quick night camping in Yosemite.

On the way home, the car was hot, the air rushing past the window was hot, the dog was very, very hot.

Enter Shasta Lake—like a mirage ahead as we drove doggedly north. Should we stop? It's always hard to get off the highway when there're so many more miles to go. But we did! Thank god we did. The beaches very steep, dropping away quickly into cool depths. The  water impossibly clear and impossibly blue. The beach mud a bright volcanic red. And NO ONE THERE. A rope swing down the way dangling unused, waiting for us.

I often think about going back. It's strange to think that if I did I'd have to tromp down through the dirt to reach sad puddles of water.

This One Time In Russia

All this talk of the Sochi Olympics has reminded me that, in fact, I have been to Russia. To Sochi! I used to travel tremendously for work. This was before I built/ran an indoor skatepark, when I owned one less house and supervised one less dog than I do today. I went there with a film crew making a movie about snowboarding. My job was to write about that.

The surprising thing was how non-cliche all the cliched parts were. People do shuffle about in large furry hats because it's deeply, authentically cold there. Vodka is preferred over beer, as it warms your throat and heart. The culture of bribery and corruption runs as deep as you can imagine—but also on the day-to-day surface. And it's all very, very Russian.

Now, this was way back in 2005, so I don't remember much. Just snippets really. How high the mountains were. How much we hiked, post-holing through the deepest snow. How hungry we got. How at dinnertime all we could ever smell anywhere was onions browning in pans. The bribes we paid. The cabbage-based food we ate. How obviously, tragically American we looked at all times, in all situations.

This was way before Russia was the 2014 Olympic venue—and before a lot of other stuff, too. You have to come to your own conclusions. But me? I don't think I'm gonna watch the Games—not beamed from a country who's leadership would deem my sister's family at best illegal and at worst "a very dangerous sign of the apocalypse."

2014 To-Dos

  Be calm: Can I get my wasted-angst numbers down to almost zero? Despite life?

Rebuild my kitchen: Cut open. Tear down. Sand. Repaint. Install. Make new. Or at least a LITTLE more like the photo below.

Eat more vegetables: Got this cool cookbook from my mommy—a vegetable-based recipe for every single day of the year. Seasonal and stuff. No excuses now.

Portugal: As in, go there.

Wintering

As I said before, I've banished all talk of taking stock and "last year at this time." Instead, I'd like to report about a simple holiday trip into winter last week. Four days with family, short and sweet. Planes and FWD vehicles. So-early wake ups—the sun still behind the peaks—just so I could catch a ride into the mountain with my dad. Hours of quiet out there in the cold, riding through the powder all by myself. The trees—the trees! How they looked all caked with new snow, like cakes, you know?

By Christmas night, I was ready for home, though. There is a statute of limitations on celebrating—on sitting around the kitchen table with everyone you are related to eating and drinking and talking, on going for walks just for something to do, on cookies. Yes—even cookies.

Lovely to visit, lovely to come home. Lovely to spoon with dog in bed and carry on with real life in a regular, non-holiday fashion. January 2nd, wherefore art thou?

The Death of Santa Claus

Plane tickets have been purchased, and my holiday journey "home" is being planned. As usual, I'll be going backward to the outback I used to know, where the thin air of altitude sparkles with the cold and the wind whips tirelessly at the faraway peaks. Last year, I got several of the kind of perfect days pictured above. This year? Who knows. Nothing is guaranteed … except maybe my annual discourse with nephew Pat on the nature of Santa. He's 9 now. Does he still be believe?! I'm gonna find out, you guys. For now, a poem. A funny, sad poem. About Santa Claus.

The Death of Santa Claus by Charles Harper Webb

He's had the chest pains for weeks, but doctors don't make house calls to the North Pole,

he's let his Blue Cross lapse, blood tests make him faint, hospital gowns always flap

open, waiting rooms upset his stomach, and it's only indigestion anyway, he thinks,

until, feeding the reindeer, he feels as if a monster fist has grabbed his heart and won't

stop squeezing. He can't breathe, and the beautiful white world he loves goes black,

and he drops on his jelly belly in the snow and Mrs. Claus tears out of the toy factory

wailing, and the elves wring their little hands, and Rudolph's nose blinks like a sad ambulance

light, and in a tract house in Houston, Texas, I'm 8, telling my mom that stupid

kids at school say Santa's a big fake, and she sits with me on our purple-flowered couch,

and takes my hand, tears in her throat, the terrible news rising in her eyes.

(From last year—my life skills don't lend themselves to cookie decorating.)