January 25 + Astoria
As a month of 31 days, January's in no hurry to leave. I think the magic of this early-in-the-year time is getting 100% back to basics, getting 100% serious about clearing out clutter both mental and physical—like, replacing the strings of white lights in the windows with nothing, with fresh space, with newly cleaned glass.
Something else that makes me feel like I have more air in my lungs is travel, by road, by car, with good people if that's at all possible? Exploration. I am still determined to find new favorite places in Oregon. And despite my longstanding grudge against the Oregon coast (too crowded in the summer, too gloomy in the winter, altogether too many windsock shops), a few of us drove to Astoria this weekend, and I was charmed by the place.
I liked the ancient crumbling victorians piled all the way up the hillside. I liked the colossal freighters anchored in the inlet. I liked the melancholy place names—like Cape Disappointment, where all the ships crashed, even the one carrying supplies to build a new lighthouse. Astoria's just a grand, rugged ole frontier timber town straight out of The Journey Of Natty Gann or something. It's exceptionally Northwest!
Anyway, we let the dogs lunge through the waves and watched Billy do donuts in his SUV on the beach. We stopped at view points and looked at views. We drank beer and ate copious french fries and then fell asleep early in one of the quietest, comfiest hotel rooms with the softest of beds.
The Year That Was
I don't usually sweat the New Year or starting fresh, but this year I did take a little inventory and did find things a little wanting and did make a little list. Things to remember. Ways to live. Aspirations of a higher order.
1) To wait and see. Patience served me well in 2015.
2) To live honestly. It's a character thing.
3) To be there and be cool for my friends and my family. Relationships are complex, but what they require is pretty simple.
4) To pay attention to the world around me. The little things are the big things, etc.
5) To get good at getting old(er). I think this has to do with cultivating an ongoing appreciation of me, such as I am.
Aaanyway, here's a wee tour through my 2015. Salut!
Spring: Tiki-bar karaoke. Eugene for Derek's birthday. Skating in shirt sleeves under the flowered, drooping trees.
Summer: New York City skate gangs. Go Skateboarding Day hill bombs. A boozy rabbit hole of summer involving swimming spots and front stoops.
Fall: Road tripping to the American Southwest in order to bathe in the sage-brush breeze. Halloween hijinks. Piles of crunchy leaves and all the trees caught on fire.
Winter: Powder days. Arctic nights. Copious celebrations indoors—where everyone gets along because it's too cold not to.
Vacation Views
I've spent 30-something Christmases in the Colorado alpine. My parents live on a towering ridgeline ringed with peaks, and I find it meditative to go back there once a year. To wander. To wheeze. To snowboard. To curl up in my bed at the top of the house and lay there in the dark watching the moonlight on the snow and the lights of faraway snowcats, 10 miles up the valley at the ski resort, going up and down restoring order to the slopes, until I fall asleep and then the dawn breaks all cold and blue.
This year:
This year I was especially in awe of the the winter scenery. It'd rained in Portland for 17 days straight before my trip, and so the dazzling sun on the Colorado snow was so freaking bright I could barely open my dim little eyes.
This year I rode my fill of powder, through trees and open snowfields, till my legs ached and my back spasmed. On Christmas Eve Day, we lapped the lifts for hours and then went in the lodge at the top of the mountain to warm up, where we drank hot coffees stiff with Jim Beam and ate snacks my mom had packed for us whilst contemplating the expanse of rugged peaks out the window.
This year, in cosmic observance of the Christmas Eve full moon, I made my entire family go for a late night hike through the dark. Some were more game than others, but I thought it was lovely and remain a firm believer in the magic of a winter night.
Snow-caked trees and 14,000-foot peaks, et cetera.
Dusk dog walks on the ridge line.
Vacation views to remember.
Sun + fresh snow. The air was super sparkly!
Real-deal parking prices at Vail Mountain. (I did not park here.)
Aaaaanyway, 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.
Ghosts Of Christmas Past
I come to you today from memory lane: Oregon. Colorado. Nights that got cold. Christmas parties in my old kitchen. Winter quiet. Snow in the city. Snuggling in my pop's chair with nephew Pat.
Late-December dusk at 13,000 feet—white knuckled in the passenger seat on that crazy road between Denver and mom and dad's house.
The Slammer—a scummy bar with a heart of gold. This place decks it out for Christmas, but I don't think you can go there anymore on account of it being clogged with Chads and tourists. Fuck it, though.
Dog walks on Christmas Day when everyone was happy and the snow danced with sunlight.
Baby-face Justin, back when the boys lived in the Belmont house and threw the wildest New Year's Eves.
A mistletoe last year, for kissing season. As I recall, I'd been feeling blue, and although December did bring with it a spicy kiss or two, they weren't partaken of in any real proximity to my kitchen or this talisman of Druidic fertility. Nevertheless!
A powder day. A powder day with my dad. How many of these I’ve had in my life, I can’t be sure, but they’re very valuable.
Me hanging twinkly lights at Commonwealth in 2011, the year I decided against all odds to open an indoor skatepark in the middle of a recession.
This picture reminds me of the unkempt Chrismas parties I used to have and how one in particular, maybe even this one, ended with a can of caramel popcorn getting tossed all over the hardwoods and then, like with alchemy, transformed into a kind of tar thanks to the addition of spilt beer and dancing. Ah those were the days!
Nephew Pat in his Kermit slippers, working his way through a dire case of post present-opening blues.
Do y'all remember how for a little while there after Department Of Skateboarding got torn down, we still skated the empty warehouse—just cuz it was winter outside and there was NO WHERE ELSE TO GO?
The coldest Christmas camping in Arches National Park. We were the only ones. It was beautiful and austere. I turned into an icicle.
Peace on earth.
First Snow
After a happy youth spent bumper-car-ing between snowbanks in Colorado, I have fallen out of touch with driving in the snow. Won't do it. Don't really have to. Sometimes, though, it sneaks up on you.
What happened was, Trish and Cairo lured me off the couch to hike up Larch Mountain. It was your average astronomically rainy Sunday. We thought we were prepared. We had an umbrella, a carload of people, and a carload snacks, along with a plus-sized dog to eat if things got really bad. What we couldn't predict was that on the way up the access road, the temperature would dive 15 degrees in as many minutes. No one saw the big fluffy flakes coming. No one thought they'd do anything more than harmlessly melt against the wet, dark road.
Now, snow is very beautiful. It makes the branches hang heavy. It collects the light. Everything is well defined, except for the treetops, which are buried in cloud ...
But eventually my tires stopped doing that thing they're supposed to do—making the car go. We peeled out a little, we floated around a corner on prayer alone, and when the road tilted slightly in the direction of a ditch, that's exactly where we went.
Getting stuck can be fun when you're only stuck for a little while and don't have to call a tow truck. It reminded me to buy new tires. It reminded me that the future is unwritten. It reminded me to always have at least one bad ass in the crew who will just fucking take charge and handle it—whatever "it" may be (thanks Mark!).
This is what the Columbia River Gorge looks like in November, and I ain't mad at it.
We found a new hike at a reasonable elevation. The fall colors were just fine.
Another day, another boring waterfall.