Funny How Fallin' Feels Like Flyin'

I really have been single-minded in my pursuit of some higher sense of place. I thought I could learn my way to understanding what it means to belong somewhere. And, since I moved to Oregon, I turned my back on that idea. I had to focus on the present and immediate. I was putting out fires, literally and figuratively. It was a short summer and a belly flop of a landing on September 2nd, the day I completed my probation. I felt hollowed out, something the wind could whistle through, something that looked heavier than it felt. I put my faith in believing that everything happens for a reason. Even after my time opened up, I still kept myself closed off from the place that was becoming home. When my crutch finally collapsed I found out I could stand on my own. And I finally looked around and realized I was becoming intimate with a place I told myself I hated. I found myself vulnerable and the thing that stepped forward to offer comfort was a sturdy place. It snuck into my heart with a gentle December, days of clear sky and soft night rains. I never expected you to be the one, Oregon. I didn't think I'd love you and I am the first to admit that this is a clumsy, new love. I only just recently learned what it means to give yourself to another. I don't know how I earned your trust but your patience has earned mine. Maybe we don't find a place. Maybe it finds us.

Timothy Lake

12-8-11

Yesterday Sally and I hiked around Lake Timothy. The trail that circumnavigates the lake is 13 miles total but it wanders away from the lake often. In September when I’d been out fishing by myself on the lake shore I’d welcomed the mile or two I tromped outside sight of the lake, away from the hot rocks and reflecting water. My right arm was already a deep red and hummed with warmth even in the shade of the forest. But, on December 7th it is a little less of a Godsend. The evergreen canopy shades the trail, leaving a few inches, sometimes over a foot of snow that has melted just enough to form an ice crust that you punch through with only the mildest resistance. 13 miles seemed manageable when we arrived at 11am with the sun not yet overhead. As we slipped and crunched our way down the trail the idea of walking 3 miles per hour seemed more and more grandeur. I thought of the two brand new pairs of snowshoes sitting on a shelf in my garage, still in their plastic. I thought of how light and portable they were and wondered why I’d put a pair of binoculars in my backpack instead of throwing those snowshoes in the trunk. Incidentally, when I saw my first Bald Eagle since I’d moved to Oregon it was a tiny speck in the top of a Doug Fir. I forgot about my binoculars and squinted and shielded my eyes for a better look. But, back to the beginning of the hike. As soon as we saw the sign for a detour to a Meditation Area we pulled out the small bottle of Jamison and wandered to the water’s edge, never reaching the designated meditation spot but impatiently creating our own on a sawed-off stump resting on craggy and dried out roots a few feet from the lapping lakeshore. I couldn’t imagine what other area on the lake would be more well-suited for abandoning yourself for a few seconds or a few hours to some greater good. I didn’t know how to meditate but I knew how to let the winter sun warm my face and let the whiskey warm my gut. The dogs polar bear plunged, Sally’s Boston Terrier, Murphy, out-swimming my Charlie. He ripped sticks from Charlie’s mouth the few times Charlie would beat him to a root we’d thrown a dozen feet from shore. Charlie cried, as he always done, when the pursuit of a hunk of wood leads him from wading to swimming depth. He’s always been a wader, not a swimmer. And watching him bound along the shore and take big bites of lake water made me love every flea-ridden inch of that old hairy dog. Sitka slapped my legs with a root she’d ripped out of the rocks, not wanting to hand it over but preferring a game of tug of war that would have ripped the skin off my palms. And Suzy just darted from woods to shore, a solar-powered dog charging her mammoth battery bank.
We eventually mosied onward, but chose to follow the shoreline rather than the ice snow trail in the woods. Layers came off as we walked in the sun and the daylight felt endless at high noon. Any parts of the trail that were sheltered from the sun became crunching and stomping. We were perplexed how a firm layer of rock and sand would collapse under our sneakers (yep, sneakers), revealed a few inches of ice that held up the frozen shore. We tried snow (punched through), tried the rocky lake side (punched through or slipped on frozen rock) and tried sandy beach (punched through to a muddy underbelly). Shoes became muddy clod-hoppers and the dogs frolicked in filthy exuberance (except Murph who whimpered and tiptoed his way through the landscape). Eventually we found ourselves pacing down a spidery northern finger of the lake. Five months ago we would have dropped the backpacks and dove off the sandy bank into dark green water, letting the last 9 miles of the hike dry our clothes. But, this time of the year it was just jokes (I think, Sally’s from Minnesota so maybe she was serious) about polar bear plunges. The finger was endless. Eventually a man in reflective orange vest emerged from the woods, watching us intently. I whistled for the dogs, excepting to hear a shotgun blast, until I saw his tripod. A surveyor from Portland General Electric, deep in the woods midweek. Neat job. At least as long as December offered up sun instead of snow or rain. We wandered back onto the trail, regretting it almost instantly as the snow deepened and thoughts of homemade snowshoes entered our minds. The trail led us away from the lake, and knowing we were lengthening the distance of our hike, we stayed keenly focused on the glimmer of blue that would lead us back to the lake and sun. The dogs kept frolicking, except Suzy, who hated her pointy claws punching through the snow. She hurky jerked down the trail, seeming to think that moving quickly would end the experience sooner. If she hadn’t kept running back to us she may have been right in that assumption.
Eventually we found our way to whatever the lake equivalent is tidelands is. Stumps rose out of the snow and flocks of birds scattered into the blue. We found a snowy log to cross a stream, only realizing a few hundred feet further that we needed to cross again to undo that mistake and to keep the lake on our right as one must do when completing a circle. That fording didn’t go quite as dryly. We slapped down frozen, rotten logs to tightrope across. The Jamison ensuring that our feet missed the mark and sunk our sneakers into the mountain stream. Sloshing down the lake, we forgave our frozen feet as the sun melted closer to the treeline. The shoreline turned from frozen sand to boulders, more stable but required a bit more focus to traverse. And the sun ticked as it eased closer and closer to the trees. Looking across the lake, waves and blue yawned between us and the gap on the far shore where Sally’s car sat. I glanced at my watch and two hours of sunlight didn’t seem sufficient to reach vehicular warmth by sunset. But by now we were over halfway and the only option was onward. Scrambling to the treeline, a shrill and proud chirping overhead opened my heart to this place. I had not seen a Bald Eagle in Oregon even though I’ve lived here for fifteen months now. We couldn’t see it yet but then a small black speck deep in the sky gave away it’s flight. Then another, maybe it’s mate, dipped low by the trees, briefly close before it caught a thermal and soared upward. Now we weaved through the scraggly trees still living on the bank above the beach. Passing fire rings and wooden camp benches we switched from shore to bank as we paralleled the far side of the lake where we’d arrived.
Finally we caught the main trail and followed yet another finger to a wooden bridge to cross what we hoped would be one of the last inlets that lengthened our trip as we were forced to follow a winding shore rather than any sort of efficient linear path that may spare us a moonlit hike. That’s when we realized Charlie was missing. We stopped and waited. Then started whistling. Then hollering. Then searching. Sally went off-trail as I walked back the way we came. Charlie is not the most savvy dog out there and has been found in the bottom of a well after one of his adventures. He’s Timmy, not Lassie. With less than an hour of daylight and miles left before us, anger and worry started creeping in as Charlie maintained his absence. As I imagined life without that furry bear of a numbskull dog he came bounding down the trail, obviously deep behind us in pursuit of whatever joy he’d seen off-trail. His happiness turned to concern as he saw the look on my face and he slowed to a plod, tail down. I told him he was an asshole an clipped his leash onto his collar, punishing myself as much as him as I hooked up my ball and chain for the rest of the walk. With a sense of purpose to beat the tick of the sun we kept on, following the trail, crossing the bridge, and then beating our way back off-trail to the lakeshore. This last stretch was the most silent. Hats were donned and layering resumed. The grey and violet of dusk settled around us like a shawl. Except a shawl that had been left in the freezer instead of the closet. Eventually Murphy ended up in Sally’s backpack. He put up zero fight as she lowered him into the bag, simply shivering as he was zipped into the pack. He never attempted escape for the remaining miles. Looking back, Mount Hood surprised us, rising up beyond the lake as proud as those eagles, content in the fading light. The lights of a ski slope twinkled on it’s northern slope. It grew larger and larger as we walked southward. The moon rose out of the east, offering a gentle warning in lieu of the departed sun. Twilight allowed visibility that crept away, but never fully left us as our eyes adjusted and the moon twinkled off the snow-bitten slopes of the lake. We tripped more and talked less. I felt to blame for the lack of planning on how long it takes to walk 13 miles when it’s mostly in snow and over rock, even if it is pancake flat. But, an hour into dark we stumbled onto pavement and a quarter mile from Sally’s car. Murphy was released from his pack, Charlie kept on his leash and chatter resumed. Hamstrings tight as bent saplings we eased into the car, eager for heated seats and no more steps. The conversation was slow and easy as wine on the forty five minute drive back to town. The icy road proved no challenge for Sally’s Midwestern driving skills. And it was with much anticipation that we parked in front of Fearless Brewing, eager to make good on talks of double bacon cheeseburgers and multiple beers. The food was subpar and the service cool, as it usually is there, in spite of the vacant tables. But, we wolfed down a basket of fries and our overcooked burgers without complaint. The beer was cheap and delicious, even the winter ale that I’d usually avoid but felt compelled to order because “warmth” was in the description.
We parted ways in the parking lot of Estacada’s only grocery store. I had to lift Charlie into the Subaru and realized he’ll feel worse than me in the morning, taking into account his dog years. I got home to the gremlin cats and a cold house but the heat was soon blowing and the dogs, bellies full, curled into their beds. I thought of you last night as I do most nights (and days). I watched Moonshiners for the first time and most of The Jerk for the third or fourth. Eyes and heart heavy I crawled into bed, Lily soon digging under the covers and nestling into the crook of my arm as she does almost every night. I lay there in that empty tideland between sleep and wakefulness. I realized I’d forgotten to write to you today, as I’ve done every day since we last spoke. So, I thought of you instead. I thought to you that I love you. It occurred to me that even though I think that many times every day, I haven’t heard it spoken for three weeks. It’s probably over between you and I. That thought settled deep into my chest as sleep closed in. Your pictures still surround me in this house. They rest on every surface. The cards you gave me hang in their place. Your childhood memories stay scattered across the fridge. Your clothes still hang in the closet and your shoes are mixed with mine at the door. But, things don’t make people and I figure someday soon even those things won’t be here to keep me wishing things had ended differently. I wrote to you this morning to make up for yesterday and added it to the folder of love letters that you will probably never read. But, that’s the point I suppose. This isn’t for you. It’s more me. This journey is not planned. It’s off-trail and the footing is poor. But, when you travel in a circle your only option to keep walking to where you began.

The Very Last Country Song

If nobody did nobody wrong
If we knew what we had before it was gone
If every road led back home
Then this would be the very last country song

Typical country, right? And your dog used your toothbrush before he ran off with your ex-wife's daughter-in-law. Maybe there's somethin' to this one though.

I used to think context was physical. That meaning was rooted in longterm commitment to a specific place. I don't know that this is false now. (I don't know much I've discovered, to tell you the truth.) But, I've discovered a new joy in exploration. Not knowing the backroads down here, not knowing the reputations of the different towns, not knowing the best (and worst) places to grab a burger, this is all becoming exciting rather than daunting. Moving away from my home initially made me hyper-sensitive to my outsider status in a place where most of the people I know now grew up. Now, I was the foreigner, the one gives you that blank look when you have to get more and more general when telling me how to find a great hike you're recommending or what town you grew up in. I hated that transition, from knowing all the nooks and crannies of Puget Sound to not even knowing if a town is on the east or west side of the state. I dunno what fog is finally lifting but I'm starting to chomp at the bit to get out and wallow in my ignorance. I want to buy a black and white map of the state of Oregon and starting filling it in, with color, as I figure out what's where. I'd always imagined living somewhere open when I was a kid. I fantasized about yawning landscapes and pine forests. That was an impossibility in the tucked in, cloud covered, soggy Puget Sound basin, that place I never thought I'd leave. Now that those ties are cut, at least for the time being, I wonder what sort of weird prairie Oregon is hiding. The Willamette Valley has already claimed a portion of my heart. Corvallis started digging in before I ever considered Oregon. Now it feels like my home away from home. It's even starting to get some depth and hold a little bit of sadness rather than two-dimensional good times. Like any good place, history isn't going to be all roses. But, getting back to the point at hand, I think I may have set aside the urge to feel at home somewhere. I'm not sure yet, it's been such an obsession for so long, but I don't feel that same intensity to feel belonging right now. I just feel excitement for discovery. Maybe this is the whole point. Maybe in releasing that need to control your comfort, you open yourself to a vulnerability that's necessary to truly be welcomed home. I suppose there is only one way to find out.

In the backyard the piled leaves lay soggy and stubborn as the wind kicked the last remaining maple leaves from the branches. Sky, the color of doubt, thickened and drew near, unapologetically eavesdropping. The woodstove grunted as I dropped in the still-wet hunk of fir. It looked like a dog had spent the summer gnawing the edges. I was just grateful this piece didn't drip with fat black carpenter ants. Earlier, the intrusion of my rusted old maul into a round of cherry explosded ants across the concrete patio. I danced across their flash mob, thoroughly crushing months of practice and choreography. As the woodstove groaned and creaked, James Taylor pleaded, "Go on and do as you please, You ain't gonna see me gettin' down on my knees." Most of the rain outside missed it's landzin zone, the overflowing koi pond (minus the koi), and pelted into the plastic awning over the patio or thudded on the grass, already an inch deep in water. Then it paused, taking a breath like a falled toddler, and the blitz continued. Stepping outside, hands in pockets, I walked the ten minutes to the mailbox. The wind held me as if it were thinking of someone else, but still eased in through the gaps in my layers to touch and chill my skin. The skyt was wooled and heavy to the east, thinning as it extended, reaching west to the horizon and the ocean. A sliver of blue lay across the western sky like the last slive of pie in the pan, or the answer you wanted to a question you didn't want to ask. I looked across the field of Christmas trees surrounding the house, wondering when they'd be harvested. I assumed they'd be cut one day while I was away at work and I'd return to find they'd finally taken what was never really mine.

Sometimes things open up in ways you don't expect or anticipate. Sort of like playing sports. You may have had one play in mind but you can't control what the other team is going to do. You could take the ball and run (my prerogative usually) or you can look up, see what the defense is offering you even if it seems they're taking something away. It might make the most sense for you to keep the ball, muscle your way upfield, drive as far as you can. Or it might make sense to pass. I've never been good at passing. I get blinders on and only see what's right in front of me. I tend to go deaf and mostly get bloodthirsty and just want to hit contact and drive through it - the dumbest, simplest, sometimes most rewarding way to achieve progress.

I'm not real sure where to go from here. A lot has changed, some in ways I orchestrated and anticipated and some in ways I hadn't considered... those damn blinders again. But, lessons are learned every day, every play, every decision we make has repercussions. When you feel like you aren't getting any momentum on the field the key is to always go back to your most basic gameplan. Move the ball. Those meters turn into tries eventually if you're willing to give a little to get a lot.

Maybe winning isn't what I imagined it to be. Or maybe winning is beside the point in this game.

I'm The Newcomer Now

Almost a decade ago, I read a book that anchored the building resentment and restlessness I’d felt since my family’s exodus from the 5 acres that I’d called home from age 3 to 17. Ana Maria Spagna’s collection of essays, Now Go Home: Wilderness, Belonging and the Crosscut Saw, gave me a purchase point from which to begin making amends with my anger at displacement. I felt justified in blaming Calfornians for my problem. The heightened housing market down South allowed Californians to buy houses in Washington the same way we used to buy clothes in British Columbia. Their dollar beat ours and in return we had to beat it as they moved into our houses, basements gurgling with bloated property taxes and sales prices. It seemed fair to blame the newcomers, even though some of my best friends, and later a longterm relationship, all originated from California. (It wasn’t them, it was the other Californians, the greedy ones). Scapegoating felt appropriate. It was easier to blame Californians for the sale of our family farm rather than confront the reality that my parents had been divorced for five years and it was time for my mom to move on, and in with someone else. Just because I felt at home on that 12 by 6 mile piece of rock in the middle of the Puget Sound didn’t mean my mom did. She was lonely, overworked, and eager for a connection with someone other than her two teenage kids. But, why bother acknowledging the complicated reality when there were BMWs and Land Rovers parked on either side of my Chevy pickup in the senior parking lot at the island’s one high school? It was easier to hate Them.

Neat tangent. What I really wanted to write about was what the hell has happened in ten years. I read Ana Maria’s book, a few times, and eventually wrote my college thesis on home and the housing market and if the two were compatible. I concluded that the out of control real estate market was in the business of selling the idea of Home: comfort, community, familiarity, friendship, family, safety… You could buy some or all depending on how many zeros you tacked onto that sales price. But the idea of a house as a financial investment and a commodity increased traffic and turnover of an already restless population. As Americans, and especially West Coasters, we have shallow roots. It’s easy to move to the next best place if it holds more promise than an underwhelming reality of here, this place. But moving and selling for more than you bought a place for, and sniffing out a community and deciding it’s not what you’d been looking for, I think, started pulling even harder at an unraveling thread of community in these fragile small places. I concluded my thesis that maybe I was wrong in asserting that everyone stop moving like the whistle had been blown in a game of freeze tag. Maybe it was unrealistic to assume that everyone could afford, or find happiness in staying put. So, I proposed that the next best thing would be to really get after whatever community you are currently a part of. Really live it up and help enrich it while you’re a part of it. Rather than sitting on the dock, jump on in because only being at the lake for a day is no reason not to stay on shore. Just be sure you pick up your cans when you leave and maybe leave a fiver in the parks donation box. And, for goodness sake, wave to the people at the campsite nextdoor, maybe even invite them over for a hobo sandwich and a beer. I figured if we could do something positive for this place we’re in today, it would be penance towards those little tears that are the result of us pulling up stakes and moving to the next place. Even if permanence is too much to ask of an impatient culture, maybe thoughtfulness wasn’t.

And that was five years ago now. It was easy to preach about community involvement. I’d been a resident of Seattle for much of the time since my mom had sold the farm. I’d spent a small stint volunteering as a firefighter on the peninsula, some time at a college in Oakland, California and a brutal six months in the cultural wasteland of Redmond, Washington. Besides that I’d made Seattle my home, unintentionally. I went to school there, I coached a college rugby team there, I played on my own city rugby team, I worked at the same family-owned store for years, I biked most of my routes in the city rather than driving, I left only to see my mom on an island to the north and my dad on a peninsula to the west. Seattle had become home and all of my unintentional ties had me firmly rooted to that landscape. I was still resentful of being in a city, fancying myself a country gal by birth, but I told myself it was temporary and I’d get out of the city soon enough. I just didn’t forsee how or where that would happen.

Getting the job offer in Portland, Oregon was a no-brainer. It was a crappy economy and getting worse. Job applications over the past two and a half years had turned up exactly zero offers of employment and word on the street was 4,500 applications had been allotted for maybe a hundred openings and to turn down those odds would have surely assured me a lifetime of holding up a cardboard sign as payback for being an idiot. So, I moved. I left the people I now considered family at work, I left the street signs I didn’t even need to look at, I left the muddy drunk college girls and the friends I’d known since we were those girls. I left the possibility of having dinner on a whim with my parents. The one thing I did not leave was the low-ceiling grey that apparently blankets the throat of the Columbia in as tight of an embrace as it holds the Puget Sound. The grey stayed, even though more than one person told me the weather was better down here. I suppose the Eskimos have over a hundred words for snow. Slight variations on wooly grey cloudcover is our expertise. It was rain, the same persistent death by a thousand drops that rolls in daily from the Pacific Ocean along this entire Northwestern coastline. It’s the only place in the world that could have had the motivation to turn the entire world to the drug of choice for the Northwest: caffeine, a vitamin D replacement for us who have moss growing out of our ears.

And I am still sidetracked. I’ve been in Portland (or the greater Portland area I should say) for 13 months now. Today it’s grey. But I’m sitting in a house hunkered a couple hundred feet from the lip of a canyon that opens up to the foothills of Mount Hood. Being the final stop for clouds that need to lighten their load to make the ascent to Eastern Oregon, it’s a bit wetter and darker here than a little further southwest in the wine country of the Willamette Valley. But, I take some solace in the pointy snowy shape of Mount Hood more than I would with a few more degrees of sun and a few less inches of rain. It’s no Mount Rainier that’s for sure. My mom always called Rainier “Grandpa’s Ice Cream Cone”. I don’t really know why but if Rainier is an ice cream cone, than Hood is an Otter Pop. Pointy and snaky, but a snow-topped mountain nonetheless. And Mount Adams is sometimes visible to the north and that’s even better, a true blue Washington mountain. I do miss the ranges though. Here, a snow peak will just stick up out of the foothills like a hitchiker’s thumb, like the other mountains left it in the dust on the family road trip. But, further north, (further home) the mountains are like teeth in a saw, too numerous to count even though they all have names.

And still not getting to the point. Okay, I think my point is that Ms. Spagna wrote another book. I just started reading it. I think I’m really going to like it. I’m living in a house on five acres that I bought a couple months ago. As happy as I am to have a little foothold outside the metro area down here I still think about home every day. The semi-permanence of a mortgage payment is good for me, it keeps me from giving up on newness, difference, unfamiliarity, and going back to what I know and trust further north. But, I do hole up here. I’ve seen very little of my neighbors even though I know all two of them are kind and good-hearted people, people I’d like to know better. I haven’t gone to church yet even though I’ve told myself that if ever there was a time to check out that dirty little habit now was that time. I haven’t turned out for the local rugby team, not good enough shape is my excuse there. And I haven’t really stepped foot in the community with any more effort than a Hi How Are You at the checkout counter of the local grocer. Here I am, the person I wrote my thesis on and following my own advice is a lot harder than when I was 21 years old and dolling it out like it’s what I was paid to do. In my gut, I want Washington to be where I raise a family, where I continue cultivating friends, where I grow old. But, in the interim, I need to open up a small piece of my heart to Oregon. It’s where I am, where I own a home, and, most importantly, who cuts my paycheck. It’s where my girlfriend feels at home and where her mom’s family’s from and her mom lives now. It feels strange to welcome a stranger into my home but I guess I’m the stranger, not this place. It’s always been here. I’m the newcomer now.