It isn’t at all like this where I’m from
rhapsody
driving
justneedtogetthisoutofmysystem
animprecision
thinking of Lifshin
cloud22.jpg
oppression
sea of clouds
covenant
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rhapsody
driving
justneedtogetthisoutofmysystem
animprecision
thinking of Lifshin
cloud22.jpg
oppression
sea of clouds
covenant
early morning tea, Mount St. Helens
birds taking flight
broccoli on a stick
it's delicious!
open space very high up
Kate hates styrofoam.
curried peas. Thanks JME!
Morgan Lake
Oregon clear
angel eyes
Is IT in you?
don't mess widdus
laughter and forgetting
Moab checkout girl
American Idyll
hovering in a friendly way
Mount St. Helens
early morning tea
lunch-time
red rocks of UT
fashion is muy importante!
ah, that's better.
Utah take me home
on the road of life....
silly dance
Sinclair4
lazy telluride day
tell-u-ride
man about town
happy telluride dogs
tired, as in DEAD
wheels
from Rome to the midwest
headache called "today"
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Morgan Lake, Oregon
B By the time we reached La Grande, the sun had started to settle his hips down into the mountain tops. So many of our days were like this: waking in the dew-covered tent, breaking camp with a flurry, then the long, pretty drive against dusk. We hoped to find a camp spot and make dinner before dark.
“What town is this?” asked Kate, a bit nervous about the setting sun.
“La Graaaand?” I replied. “La Gran-day?” I googled for a campsite, park, or pond nearby. Google returned a place called Silver Lake Campground, with a specific address. We drove up road X for 1.2 miles, took a turn on road Y for .02 miles, then a HARD LEFT at the traffic circle, followed by a slight right, then a slam! on the break for .0001 miles, followed by some cursing. We were at the exact address Google delivered us to, and it was…a fire station.
“Quick! Let’s ask those guys for directions!” I pointed at two strapping lads headed for their car. Kate hesitated a little. They looked like Lumberjack Oregon Firefighter Loggermen! When we asked them about Silver Lake, Franklin (light green eyes) and Joe (quiet, background-type) said they’d never heard of such a place. But they’d gladly see us to a city-owned campsite not far off, at Morgan Lake. We followed their old Volvo (Kate loved their car) through town and country, parting ways at a gravel road that would lead us to the campsite. I invited them to join us for dinner, in a few hours, if they didn’t mind camp food. They accepted.
Kate couldn’t believe it. “We have no food!” she insisted. “And we don’t have any time–the sun’s going down!” She was right. She dropped me off by the lake and headed back into town to shop for groceries. I pitched the tent. My cell was dead, there were swarms of mosquitos following me everywhere I walked, and I could swear I heard a band of coyotes in the distance, making me shiver. When finally the Chevy pulled up, gratitude flooded my brain. An hour later, dinner was ready: rice, beans, homemade guacamole(!), chips, homemade salsa(!!), bread, olives, and roasted vegetables. And beer. Kate had out-done herself.
The guys arrived at ten to find us huddling over a paltry fire made of twigs and branches. It was all I had been able to find. They left and returned with their arms full of firewood. Ah, men.
The evening went off splendidly: everyone had enough to eat, Franklin and Joe proved to be engaging dinner guests, and we soon succumbed to the “dazed and sleepy” look of people who had eaten too much. When at a very late hour the guys left, I sat poking at the embers for a bit, thinking about the need people have for other people. A coyote howled in the distance, but I didn’t shiver. It was an honest, beautiful sound.
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Oregon or the Grave!
FFeet up, windows down, the sky above us stretched out in blues and pinks –is it possible to see into the future? It seems possible with a sky like that. Due east, Devendra Banhart! Take me there with your trilling voice, my Lord.
The Columbia river starts in British Columbia and rushes southward to the Pacific, delineating Washington from Oregon along the way. For eighty miles between The Dalles and Boardman, OR, it runs along I-84, a smooth stretch of road that rocked me gently to sleep. This interstate is also known as the Old Oregon Trail Highway 6, and on it we moved directly against the flow of history as we headed east. I imagined passing by remnants of The Peoria Party, with their flag proclaiming “Oregon or the Grave!”, followed by weary Elm Grove families in covered wagons. In 1848, someone found gold in California. Hundreds of thousands joined the westward migration, borne along by the mighty Columbia.
In the 1840’s there flourished an energetic certainty that the US was destined –even preordained –to expand across the continent. This concept of “Manifest Destiny” was used to advocate for or justify our acquisition of new territories. In the famous 1872 painting by John Gast, a goddess-like Columbia, representing America, leads settlers westward; she is stringing telegraph wire and carrying school books. A closer look reveals that the bison and Native Americans flee before her seemingly angelic visage.
In today’s world, the idea of a God-granted duty to change or displace other people seems childish; in my world it’s an outright farce. But I do confess an attraction to the idea of Destiny. I suppose this makes me religious in the sense that “destiny” implies a natural order to the universe. So much of our religious feeling, it seems, comes from the dueling emotions of fear (of chaos) and yearning (for order). Old religions always have a method of divination, don’t they, a way for us to peer into the order of things: bones thrown, arrows tossed, tea leaves spread onto a wooden tray. Out of this random chaos comes order, or at least that’s what the numerologist says before taking your money.
I often wonder what my destiny is. Is it a “sealed fate”, or do I get to participate? Is there a cover charge at the door? I don’t want so much, really. To eat just enough, to hear quiet music nearby, to have good friends and see them healthy and loved by others…
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At the Bagby Hot Springs
TThe Bagby Hot Springs are located in the Mount Hood National Forest, approximately sixty-seven miles southeast of Portland. Long used by native americans, they were named after Bob Bagby, a hunter and prospector who stumbled upon them in 1880. A bathhouse was built in 1920, but it was destroyed by an unattended candle in ‘79. Today, The US Forest Service maintains three bathhouses with the help of volunteers who live on-site.
Despite what the internet says about the Springs being “easy to locate,” we found ourselves winding up and down about twenty forest roads, some with paper plate signs (one of them saying, simply, “Mother”), until stumbling –like Bagby himself –onto the trailhead. It’s a 1.5 mile hike to the Springs. With our tent, food and clothes on our backs, we searched for the fabled Bagby campsite, about a quarter-mile past the baths. The topo map we had was useless, and after an hour of hiking we decided to make camp in a level clearing by a stream. Kate made an excellent fire, I roasted broccoli on a stick. Have you seen this movie? It captures the Babgy Springs perfectly:
When I was a kid, one my my earliest heroes was Grizzly Adams, from the TV show. He had left civilisation for the wilderness (something about being wanted for a murder he didn’t commit) and enjoyed a nigh-telepathic bond with animals. His demeanor was always gentle, thoughtful, and he looked vaguely like Kenny Rogers, another icon of my childhood. I had fantasies of running away into the woods, subsisting on plants and fungi, and, like ‘ol Grizzly himself, communing with the creatures. The television series lasted two seasons, just enough time for the transformation to take place: on the outside, I still looked like a little girl, but on the inside…I was…JUNIOR GRIZZLY! Of course, the real James “Grizzly” Adams was a deadbeat dad who trapped wild animals and sold them to PT Barnum’s Traveling Show. In the seventies, that would have made an unpopular show.
Kate and I woke early the next morning to break camp and make it to the baths before anyone else. It was a chilly monday morning; the likelihood of people visiting the Springs at this hour was low, and we hadn’t seen any other campers. Of course, being women, we constantly have to make concessions to our sex and consider the risks in any given situation. We know where our codiac mace is at all times. But Junior Grizzly does not like having to make concessions. She would rather take a few (calculated and juicy) risks and lose from time to time, than live a caged life. Whose world is this, anyhow?
Laying in a hollowed-out cedar log, steam rising into the cold morning air, I tilted my head to hear the chirp-chirp of Oregon birds. “This forest is a cathedral,” I thought. I looked at Kate, who had fallen back into her log so that only her bent knees showed. Even her knees are beautiful. Kate says that she is an ugly woman, but I know in my heart that’s not true. Her words, her thoughts, her smile, her shoulders in the sun. It is simply not true.
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Portland, Oregon
AAfter visiting Alaska, every sunset nudged us closer to home. In Brooklyn, my cats Ruben and Little One Eye were waiting for me, growing fat, and Kate’s friends held their nightly Casper vigil. It seemed that we’d only just touched our feet to the muskeg before boarding the MV Columbia again. Good-bye, Tom and Kira, good-bye bar boys with headgear, it was very nice, we had a lovely time, good-bye. We wanted to ferry over to Sitka and visit Miyike (met on ferry #1) but there was no efficient way to do this.
Stumbling onto land at 7am, Bellingham looked exactly as we had left it seven days before, but with the scent of a story read to us from an old book, damp-smelling. We were ready for the next book. We drove south from Bellingham, quick stop for tea, another at an exit advertising “farm fresh corn!” (which we couldn’t find), another visit with Jamie in Redmond –Shall we see Seattle? No Seattle! –Hwy 5 to Portland for lunch, quick stop for gas –oughtn’t we have seen Seattle? Google-searching for vegetarian cafes in Portland, inadequacy of google forcing us to ASK FOR DIRECTIONS, circling in the car like mad to find parking, we settled finally at the corner of NW tenth and W Burnside Street.
This is also the address of Powell’s, the largest bookstore in the world. It takes up a city block and stocks a million new and used books. “Sure,” I snorted, “in the world, no less.” (Why are New Yorkers this way? Is it something in the water?) In my defense, I just couldn’t imagine a bookstore with more character, or more books, than our beloved Strand. That’s right –EIGHT MILES of BOOKS organized so haphazardly and rising a mile above your head, dumped there with such little love that you balk at any price tag over a dollar –that’s the Strand. And lest you forget where you are, notice the commode so tiny and bespattered with GOO that you’ll fairly gasp the words: New York City.
But I was not in New York, at least not yet, and I’d been roughing it for three weeks. Where’s the café in this bookstore? Happy camper Chunsoon Li wants a chai spiced latte with soy milk and Splenda. Oh, and a cookie…yes, that one…in the back under those others? Thank you. Kate left me to find a book about the Appalachian Trail, something she’s taken a keen interest in. I settled down at a table with my cookie, my tea, and my ‘top.
Powell’s bookstore is wonderful. They organise the books by title, so if you’re looking for a decent, tattered copy of Lolita circa 1955 or its current lascivious incarnation you will find them side-by-side on the shelf –okay, well, you won‘t find the rare green classic but you take my meaning: Powell‘s encourages people to buy used books. I saw a sign that proclaims: “Every day, we receive four to six thousand used books”, which somehow makes me smile and cringe at the same time. All those books, such little time, so many bookworms dying? According to their website, about three thousand people per day walk in and buy a book (Kate), and another three just browse and drink caffeine (me). People once feared that television would herald an end to reading. Powell’s garners about eighty thousand visitors, online and in-store, per day.
Just thinking about that makes me giddy.
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Dinner at Kira and Tom’s place
head scarf like mom's
knit, purl, knit, purl
Quilt: Kate
It's remembered this way
Doug's ebb and flow
good people of the Ferry
Seer
Chunsoon Li, that's me
McSmileypants! you!
The Journalist v. Kate
smiling exhaustion
the world's most affable
Bellingham "bed head"
What's so funny?
oh those Turks
like a wistful madonna
kate and the boys
writing her life
Kate
Kate as Ms. Woolf
dinner party
she says, "I want so much"
in big letters, US!
Kira
CS and Tom at Northern Lights
Dave of the Midnight Rider
morning sonata
CS on deck
in the kitchen
I love this!
Tom's night In
tourista
as tough as he looks
tree-hugger
the most amazing bartender
power to the people
Miyike v. chunsoon
Tour Guide: detail
a very old tree
The pensive Journalist
miyike, we hardly knew ya
cs tickles the ivory
creatures of the night
on the MV Columbia
Kira and Kate
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