Jennifer Sherowski 5/12/16 Jennifer Sherowski 5/12/16

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.

Jennifer Sherowski 4/26/16 Jennifer Sherowski 4/26/16

This Time Last Year

This April isn't last April. It's different in ways and better in ways. Last year, I was relentlessly listening to Houndstooth and befriending scruffy strangers. There was lots of sitting on porch stoops, and the nights often ran late. Life, if that's what you call all the moments between waking and sleeping, was tenuous—a little manic, even. There was a fever on the wind, and rain with the sun out. I mean that's just spring in Portland.

I bought a new, old car. I did not “bargain hard.” I’m civilized—I just paid what they asked. It’s possible that I got hosed. The plan was to have it always and forever, drive it into eternity—but now, I hear Volkswagen's gonna buy it back from me. The future is unwritten, see?

I played on an intramural softball team with a bunch of skateboarders. We lost our first game 28 to 2. In the outfield, Daniel kept complaining that he had to pee. Covering second base, Johnny was outrun by a lady in yoga pants. Up to bat, Kristina swung at fucking everything (and missed fucking everything!). I was unable to catch a single ball, even the pop fly that the gods sent straight to me like a beam of light. Hilarious, all of it!

I let some dudes I'd never met from New Jersey stay in my basement. As a rule, I love East Coasters. Salt of the earth, funny, hard boiled. I also love the rite of the traveler—how you can meet new people and feel like you already know them, bond over a couple days or a car ride, be instantly old friends. If you’ve never left your town or your life, if you’ve never stayed on someone’s couch or let them stay on yours, well then that’s one of the best things you’re missing.

Jennifer Sherowski 4/19/16 Jennifer Sherowski 4/19/16

3 Things

Saturday Skate Day: In summer, Saturdays are set aside for skateboarding all the day. Due to this Saturday being glorious, we revived the tradition. Errands were set aside. Tacos were made a priority. Life is just better when the sun is out.

The Shawshank Redemption: Did y’all know this is streaming on Netflix right now? A classic, written, oddly enough, by Steven King. Hope versus despair. Good versus evil. Plus, Tim Robbins and a young Morgan Freeman. Def worth a second, or third, or fourth watch.

A Spring Vacation: Sure, I just got back from New England, but to be clear, I don't consider that a "spring vacation." It was like flying back in time two months, weather-wise, back into tear-wrenching 30-degree wind and other East-Coast-in-April mysteries. But next year! I do plan to escape somewhere sun drenched and warm—hot even. Maybe catch a swim and a sun burn? I imagine it to be good for the health of my body, brain and soul.

Jennifer Sherowski 4/12/16 Jennifer Sherowski 4/12/16

Way Back East

Two things happened last week. I lost my cell phone and got very, very sick. The two are unrelated, but they remain connected in my mind because for both reasons, I didn't really see or talk to anyone for a few days. I was too weak to walk the dog. I bruised a rib from coughing. I procured a new cell phone but didn't have any phone numbers until I could restore the thing on my work computer. It was a strange, solitary time during which I felt oddly free. I recommend it.

ANYWAY, a bottle of antibiotics and a flask of codeine cough syrup later, I found myself in Boston, MASS, trying hard to understand the dialect of the chowdahead whilst toddling down cobblestones streets staring up at the ancient gothic spires. New England is a revelation to us westerners. It's so ... OLD. I hung my head out the car window reading aloud the incomprehensible dates off all the historical plaques hanging on everybody's houses. 1753! 1801! Those lovely little abodes had stood there through birth and death, multiple wars, all the presidents, maybe even a fire or two? I guess part of me feels like I belong in a tidy 300-year-old home—off in the woods somewhere, chopping wood and tending my parsnip crop.

We were back east for a wedding. A baller Cape Cod wedding complete with towering tubs of fresh oysters and a sun-swept backdrop of Atlantic white caps. We all got dressed up, drank shandies, and channeled the Kennedys. Everyone—from the babies to the grandmas—cried at the ceremony and danced at the reception. In my opinion, whether you're up there exchanging rings or just sitting in the crowd, it's good and healthy and important to celebrate love—as often as humanly possible.

THE Plymouth Rock, where 400 years ago some of your ancestors (not mine, I'm a more recent immigrant) stepped off the Mayflower and colonized the shit out of this country.

This here lonely little field in Concord, Mass is where the Revolutionary War started. Old stuff is cool. Revolution is cool.

The new Boston skatepark, right next to where they filmed that one Ben Affleck movie.

Oh hey, Mt. Saint Helens, I sure did miss you.

Jennifer Sherowski 2/9/16 Jennifer Sherowski 2/9/16

Lookout Below

I've almost never felt happier than I did on that first night spent rolled up inside a sleeping bag on a tiny bed in a fire lookout atop a towering mountain down south past Bend. This is because I was incredibly warm and comfortable, I was tired from wallowing 4 miles straight up in the deep snow with a heavy pack (an act that I would call mountaineering, but I know if I did real mountaineers would pat my head and say, "Hush"), I was among several people that I liked very much, and I was there in the cozy dark surrounded by 360 degrees of windows that held nothing but stars.

This fire lookout: it's a toy-sized hut built at the very top of the world. The idea is that from there, you can see everything around you, and when a wildfire starts—you can spy the column of smoke, sleuth it out on a topo map, and then quickly report it to the smoke jumpers. This is in the summer, mind you. Isn't it quaint that they still spot fires that way? Very antique.

Aaanyway, my bed was pushed up right against the window. Laying there staring out, I didn't see any mountains or rivers or majestic fields—or any land at all. We were up in the sky! I just saw stars, a senseless pile of them. And after drifting off, I awoke again hours later with the Big Dipper right in front of my face. A cosmic surprise and whatnot. In the interest of finding a "happy place" where one can seek shelter and zen-like peace, I think that this moment shall be mine and I'll close my eyes to return there again and again, then, now, forever.