This Time Last Year

This time last year, it was a lot more like spring, remember?

There was a barely warm breeze on the loose, causing me to browse the nursery for seeds for my future veggie garden (all the while caught up in a kind of frenzy dreaming about the fresh salsas and salads I’d make when the warm months returned).

There was a quick trip to Astoria to shake off the cobwebs. Despite my my longstanding grudge against the Oregon coast (too crowded in the summer, too gloomy in the winter, altogether too many windsock shops), I really liked the city's ancient crumbling victorians and 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. It's all exceptionally Northwest!

There was also a life-affirming first-ever backcountry trip to a fire lookout in Central Oregon. I’ve almost never felt happier than I did on that first night spent rolled up inside a sleeping bag on a tiny bed atop a towering mountain. This is because I was incredibly warm and comfortable, I was tired from wallowing 4 miles uphill 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.

Anyhow, in keeping with the New Year Vibrations of early Feb, I support getting 100% back to basics, getting 100% serious about clearing out clutter both mental and physical. This year, though, I don't have the energy for renewal. With the short days and darkness of weather—and with death all around—I feel like I'm only now coming out of a deep, dark hole. My current energy stores are reserved, it seems, for just keepin' on.

So hey, winter of 2017, I apologize. I'll do better next year.

2016 By The Numbers

1 mini ramp. What happened was, it rained a lot, and I started missing my old mini ramp this spring. I didn’t tell anyone, though. Within a week, the universe, along with Colin, Johnny, Niki and Deva, had delivered a lovely used ramp to my residence. Some things just work like that.

2 border crossings. I've taken to making a list of places I wanted to go. A "to-go" list. For years, the little surf/hippy town of Tofino, B.C. and the medieval ocean-faring country of Portugal have been on that list. Now they're not. Because I went there, to both places, THIS YEAR! On the making-shit-happen scale, 2016 was a level 10, I'd say.

5 months living with Mark. My steady boo moved in on August 1. 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 when that someone happens to be someone you love, well isn't that just a little bit of life magic?

6 nights sleeping out under the stars. I thought it was more. Surely it was 15 or 20? It's one of those mysteries of memory, how all those nights sleeping in my old bed, the shades closed just so, one just like the next, they all blend together, and so 1 or 2—or 6—nights passed bathing in starlight, an owl crying over there, the tallest of the trees rustling and creaking, or if in the desert, a coyote howling in the nearby dark ... Nights like these are so full of sensory experience that they just take up more room in your mind.

2 broken hearts. Twice in 3 months, I held the head of the dog I love while the life passed right out of him. Lefty? I think about him all the time. I dream of him often. And now, with a little perspective, I can look back and be proud that I didn't cling, that I was afraid but didn't let the fear rule me, and that I was able to walk with him into the best death possible.

For Durango, our lil pup, barely 5 months old, Mark and I are still struggling and struck dumb, with no understanding and no peace. Durango departed us one week ago today. Christmas, Twin Falls, Idaho. 10 p.m. We left him in the car. He was alive. We came back, he was dead. I shook him, pressed his little ribs cage and blew into his little lungs, we panicked, we yelled, we called every vet in town, we didn't know what to do, our hands froze, we cursed the cold, we drove too fast up the dark highway to an emergency vet hospital, we got pulled over in their parking lot, the cop saw Durango and said "Go!", we rushed him in, they stuck a tube down his throat, they stuck a needle in his heart, but it was all ... too late. We had to leave him there, on the table. Just leave him and walk out. Get back in the car. Drive home to Portland, 12 hours through a cataclysmic snowstorm, staring out the windows, pits in our stomach, suffocated by the stillness in the car, feeling like everything was the same but impossibly, irreconcilably different.

My dear friend Genna said to me recently, "Sometimes there's no lesson to learn, no 'takeaway.'" I shall choose to believe that. Or maybe the lesson is just how we get to know our own capacity for love when faced with its sudden absence? Anyway, for now I'm staying in, living a sparrow-brown existence, avoiding my phone with it's many megabytes of puppy photos, and pretending everything is alright—because eventually, it will be.

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.

Cabinspiration

This time of year more than others, I find it worth remembering that I have enough, I am enough.

Still, I've often pondered a world where a small woodsy cabin, forever in evergreens, was part of my life. I'd imagined it to be a humble, utilitarian place, built simply out of natural materials, and I'd go there to quiet my mind, live honestly, be outside.

In fairly breaking news, I'm here to report that I'm in the process of purchasing a small plot of land in the woods of Central Oregon. This modest half acre, shaded by Ponderosas, will in all hopes be the site of said future cabin.

I'm spending all my money on it—my retirement, and any and all savings. Fear-inducing? Yes. There is no safety net. But what's our money doing there, in the bank, anyway? Why do we work, if not to bring daydreams to right here, right now? And banks, well they don't always do the best things with our money, do they? So this is a plan to sort of take that money back. It's a retirement plan I can actually use until I retire (which, let's face it, will prob be never!).

This year, more than any I can remember, has an on-the-cusp energy. I turned 39 in September. It's very tipping-point-y. I feel an awful lot like I better start making that ideal life happen right now. If not now, WHEN?

So—I'm on the hunt for tips and cabin-spiration. I was thinking A frame. But now I'm not so sure. Maybe something more modern? I dunno. What do you think?

Joseph, Oregon Population 1052

In the past weeks, I've found myself equal parts angry/depressed. I've found myself giving my money away to charitable civil-rights-oriented institutions. I've found myself writing letters to my senator like they taught you to do in grade school—but you never, ever thought you'd have to, because you thought that while, sure, there were differences amongst folks' beliefs and experiences, that humans as a whole were generally sane enough to do the right and good thing.

ANYWAY, when it seems like the world has gone bat shit crazy, I would argue that a road trip to a very quiet place in the mountains is just the thing. This is why we journeyed many hours into Eastern Oregon on Friday afternoon, where we found, among the rolling farm lands and rugged cliffs, little cabins strung up with colored lights. We slept deeply, although the puppy was restless, and woke up on Saturday morning to hike up high into the steep hills.

We climbed till our faces and fingers were freezing, and our legs dragged. We didn't talk at all, just listened to the wild wind in the trees. Gusts of cold air, well they can scrape your mind clean, can't they? Hours later, dog tired and hungry, we loaded the pup in the truck and drove into town in search of warmth. The streets were quiet—not dead, just peaceful, and we wandered into a wood-fire pizza joint to thaw ourselves with the heat from the oven, with the pizza, with the pints of beer. Outside the window, swirls of snow rolled like tumbleweeds down the street, as the darkness of a late-November afternoon descended, and I'm not overstating this when I say that it was quite possibly the coziest couple hours I've ever spent in my life.

The world, yes, it's crazy. Scary, even! But mark my words, turn off your phone/Facebook. Get away! Navigate on nothing but intuition for a while. Move yer feet, meditate. You see new stuff. You drive. You eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You watch the setting sun break though the rain clouds over the open road, and you come home tired, and you are glad. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!