3 Things

I Am Not Your Negro. Watch this movie. Show it to your kids. Heck, show it to your pets. Yes, it's that important. I am in awe of James Baldwin as a thinker. What an amazing mind. And when you get to realizing, as he suggests, that the whole of Western Civilization was built (thru colonization/slavery/warfare) on a model of white power that we're still living in, it's like, what the F do we do now?!

Artichoke heart wings. Procured a plate of these from Century Bar the other night. Of all the things that you could deep fry and dip in a sauce instead of chicken wings, I'm gonna argue here that artichoke hearts are among the best. Full of tang/flavor, and yet light and easy on the stomach in their way. A triumph for vegetable-arians everywhere!

Recovery. After our life-giving "winter ordeal," we spent all of last week recovering. Their were sneezing fits and other symptoms of the common cold. And there was absolutely no energy to be had anywhere until Friday or so. Earlier in the week, from the moment I got up, it was a stone-cold countdown until I could come home and sit on the couch. Also, Piney got fixed and snoozed off his surgery meds with the rest of the laid-out household.

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.

Forest Escapism

Hello to you. Here's a picture of me, standing in the woods—but not just any woods, my woods! As mentioned elsewhere, I bought some land in Central Oregon. This was like, four or five snowstorms ago. Due to weather (and due to life), this weekend was my first opportunity to walk ’neath the grand Ponderosas as their bonafide owner. To have your own forest. How cool.

The plan was to build a cabin of dreams on this lot ... and maybe I still will. But as it often does, reality has set in. Permits cost money. Septic systems cost money. Materials cost money. Your hopes and dreams—they cost fucking money!

No matter. I've settled on a different plan. A for-now plan, involving the purchase of a decently cute camper trailer to park amidst the greenery (anyone know anyone who's selling one?!). This, along with a fire pit and a fence, are all that are standing in the way of me and an epic summer of escapism.

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.