3 Things
A new home: Our search for a camper-trailer elicited this 1957 bauble. It's not huge/gaudy like RVs can be. It's small, light, and practical. It is, in fact, just right. There's a shower and a marine-grade RV toilet, along with a couch that converts to a bed. And all the inside is finished with warm, beautiful wood (not a piece of formica or barf-print fabric in sight!). I can't wait to recline in the nighttime cool beneath the moon shadow of ponderosa pines and peep out the firmament of summer meteor showers.
Down the street: Two days after something awful happened down the street from my house, I walked by. The air was blue and heavy—still carrying all the sadness for what can't be fixed. And yet. And yet! Look at all the love.
Family visit: My family came and filled up my house for a week. Mornings, we ate peanut-butter toast and yelled at the dogs to quiet down. Afternoons, we sat out back drinking cold wine and laughing. I tossed the frisbee with nephew Pat while my puppy leapt back and forth ’tween us and never, ever caught on to the keep-away game. We ate so much good food, all fresh and full of living vegetables. Everyone was in good spirits and good health. On that note, how lucky am I?! I know it, and I whisper it inside every quiet moment.
(Un)Official Summer
Summer is no luxury. It's just the way things are, for a certain number of days per year. Still, it's full of a lot of things that I like very much. Like, in zero particular order, these real-life happenings from my holiday weekend:
"Swimming" being a legitimate possibility on the day's agenda.
Hard physical labor in the heat, followed by a super-cold milk shake.
BBQs with mini ramps. All the friends hanging out, all night, every night.
Something new blooming in the garden every day.
Wildfire smoke setting the evening skies ablaze.
A cool shower right before bed.
Backyard campfires, followed the smell of woodsmoke on your hoodie for days.
48 Hours In New York
I started this weekend by getting on an early flight to JFK. By noon (3 p.m. local time) I was riding through the hot city, all sticky like a glazed donut, on an A train express to the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn—where Matt and Mimi of Cape Cod wedding fame now live with their two dogs who both closely resemble stuffed baby seals.
We were back East for just over 48 hours. A quick trip to Get Out Of Town and help Matt celebrate his birthday. The goal was not tourism, but simply real life. As such, I did not see the Empire State Building or the Statue Of Liberty, just wandered around Brooklyn eating and drinking and skateboarding and soaking in all the general lawlessness and spontaneous joy of that great, old city on a summer weekend.
Vegetable-arian food. From ramen to cornmeal french toast, I ate a lot of incendiary food while I was there. My favorite, I think, was the oyster mushroom banh mi from Toad Style. I'm always trying to eat those spicy, saucy sandwiches, but I've only ever seen them made with tofu, and I don't really care about tofu—don't hate it and don't love it, but generally find it hard to digest. In other words, tofu doesn't close the deal for me. Mushrooms though!
A shot and a beer. Nowhere else on the planet do I find myself ordering a shot and a beer when I walk into a bar. But in New York, that's how they do it. Not only is it the cheapest way to consume alcohol in an expensive city, it's a super easy way to get on a vacation tilt-awhirl. Weeeeeee!
Skatepark tourism. We did a wee skatepark tour through Brooklyn. There's loads of new ones. I had fun at each one—if not skating, then people watching. From scene to style, New York is super different from Portland, almost the opposite, you could say. I dig watching and observing that stuff, from a sociological standpoint. Also, I dig fun. Coincidentally, that's what skateboarding is.
Dispatch From Camp
The last time I spent the night outside, it was high on a mountain during a freak snowstorm. Mentally, I'm still recovering. So it felt good to pack up the ole backpack again the other day with all the windows open, the sun streaming in, the screen door screening the bugs of May, the birds birding around, the buds, budding. Everything's just easier in the summer, isn't it? Throw a few things on your back, walk down a trail until you come to a river. Spend the night there, relaxed.
By the way, did y'all notice the trend in canned wine, recently? How fortuitous for me, an appreciator of the grape and its juices, fermented or otherwise. Mostly fermented. Bottles, as you know, are heavy, unwieldy. You can fit them in your backpack, and I have, many times, but only at the expense of looking a little ridiculous. Those canned wines, though, they stash perfectly in a pocket meant for camp-stove fuel or some such. What did we ever, ever do without canned wine? Whiskey, I guess.
I'm related to the best dadgam gift givers. Every time I swing through my parent's house on holiday, I come away with a new fancy thing for being outdoors and adventuresome. The Big Agnes air mattress my dad gave me is one such item. It weighs next to nothing and takes around two wheezy minutes to inflate. Then all you have to do is throw it in your tent and have a lovely, comfortable night. I'm one of those featherweight sleepers. Typically, a night of camping would mean mostly lying there awake. With this mattress, you can get all cocooned up in the fetal position on your side and sleep like a lil baby, though. Sure, I still wake up sometimes, but only now and then. The other night I woke up because—I swear—the river had gotten incredibly loud. Do you think that happens, around 3 in the morning? Witching hour? The air thins out and the river rages? Maybe preambling a wild battle of the spirit world? I wouldn't know. I never did leave the tent—just cozied back in, willed my brain into submission, and drifted off again until the sun woke up the birds and then they woke up me.
P.S. Thanks to Dorian for the lovely pic above of me and Lunden wrangling the dogs.
Thinking, Reading, Watching
The Girl With All The Gifts: We live in a Netflixian world. Books struggle, reading is second order. So the fact that I'm telling you to read this book—in the face of overwhelming odds against the practice of reading—well, that's serious, and you should take it seriously. Although suspense is at a premium here, I don't think I'm ruining anything by saying that this is a post-apocalyptic story of the zombie persuasion. And although the world does not lack for post-apocalyptic zombie stories, this one, I promise you, is different. Anthropologically speaking, it brings a fresh perspective. It's exciting, and inarguably interesting. It will get your thinking juices flowing. Note: there is a Girl With All The Gifts movie—but read the book, do, because the movie isn't nearly as rich, as fraught or as scary. Here's to books!
Fortitude: A crazy television show on Amazon Prime. I say crazy, because after every episode, I find myself saying, "That was crazy!" The kind of bad-dreams crazy where you watch two episodes, and then you have to put on Planet Earth to give your brain a break before bed. Murder. Intrigue. Evil. Science. Death. Vodka. Ice. Polar bears ... Just some of the ground covered here. It's great. Give it a go.
The Red Turtle: An animated short film about a man shipwrecked on an island. It's beautiful. I watched it once, but I'd like to see it again. I suspect there's much more there than meets the eye here. Like, maybe, the secret of life?