Colliding Rivers (or) Why men jump off cliffs

Just a guess, but Colliding Rivers viewpoint off the Rogue-Umpqua Scenic Byway in Oregon probably doesn't normally attract cliff-divers. Steep, dark granite cliffs intersect at two gorges: Little River and North Umpqua. A third unnamed stream flows into the area to create in spring melt from the southern Cascades a cauldron of white water. But when A. and I pulled in around noon mid-summer and began watching a group of cliff-divers heave themselves around 40 - 50 feet down into deep water there, it seemed like every car that pulled up was full of people who were going through the same debate A. and I were having. Would they jump too? The men I saw that day were suddenly consumed with desire to fling themselves off the cliffs into the river, whether they had been planning this or not. After all, a lone, quite cute young girl was down there doing it, too. If she could do it, well, they simply had to.

Being one of the individuals who stubbornly refused to even consider the opportunity suddenly being presented to me, ("Come on, Lizzie!" A. said to me as he tore through his own backpack), I had a bird's eye view of the whole thing. "I only have one extra pair of shorts in my suitcase," I said lamely, as though this explained my decision to not throw myself off a cliff into a river. "Riiiighttt," A. said. "I'll just watch you," I said, and I walked over to where another woman had taken up viewpoint. The following conversation ensued:

"Look at that," she said, pointing out the obvious--the obvious consisting of the cute blonde in the black bathing suit around 1/4 a mile below us, surrounded by six/seven guys jumping off her cliff, one of which I learned was my disgusted companion's fiance. I looked at her and nodded. "Men," we both said, simultaneously. At that moment, a mini-van pulled up. Out spilled what appeared to be 3 families, most of these also men, two of them female. The younger males, spotting the diver(s), whooped, began ripping clothes off themselves and headed down the cliffs. The older males began debating whether or not they should go, the females initiated scolding and clucking. After listening to the women for approximately--oh, a minute--even most of the older guys took off down the cliff, while the remaining family members drifted over to where I and the other woman stood. "Can you believe this?" one of the mothers grumped. It took a few moments, but by that time A. reached the summit of the cliff where the blonde was. He lingered a moment and then threw himself off a cliff while the blonde watched approvingly, and I peered down into the water to see if he'd killed himself. The women muttered to me, "Well, it looks like he made it." I nodded, chuckling.

There's no punch-line to this story, really, except that every car that pulled up while I was there the same thing happened. The men went, and the women waited. And whether or not the men who went knew it, the women who stayed behind were convinced the blonde was part of the reason their menfolk had to try and leap unexpectedly off a cliff when presented with the opportunity to do it. My one small moment of revenge for womenkind came when I told A. I didn't get a good picture. "You gotta do it again!" I yelled, while the women around me laughed. The pic was taken when A. was just reaching the rock where a smaller group stood. A moment later, he was in the water.

To Be: Continued

"There are only two kinds of stories," he said, "Someone goes on a journey. Or a stranger comes to town."

--Unknown Film Critic, Texas A & M Graduate school, 1999

Journeys have endings, and the first part of this trip ended for me two days ago. I sat with my feet in a stream of glacier melt about a mile north of the Columbia Ice Field. The valley rose immense around me, with stream beds full of gurgling, shallow rivers that run their course and gather eventually in the dark blue lakes I'd photographed over the past week. Grasses, purple and white lupin, and other wild-flowers I did not recognize draped the near hills, while the mountains did what mountains do--humbled me. The sun was warm, not hot on my face and arms. It was as beautiful a place as I'd ever been, and I sat there with my arms around my knees, and I closed my eyes to breathe in paradise. But in one moment, my heart welled for my mother.

There has never been often that I think of Mom without guilt. Maybe it was because my heart was light and open, made soft by the beauty around me, the feeling was so intense. I cried. I cried at the beauty she will never see that I've seen, the places she won't go that I've gone, cried at the fact I would never be able to show her other than in pictures the things her daughter loves. I cried at the fact that her life has been small, constrained by a joyless and dark illness, and that from almost the moment I drew breath I wanted to be away from her as far as I could go with a yearning so palpable that at times it actually hurt. My life has been the story of "someone goes on a journey," even if it was only when I was the child staring out the living room window of a dark house while Mom napped in the afternoons. She casts a long shadow over my life, one for which I have never been present, but always wanting to be--gone away from--love her though I do. That I did leave home and her, and that it is hard to return has been one of the difficulties of my life. I know we all have them.

The problem with travel is this, I've learned. Emerson said it best: "Traveling is a fool's paradise. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from." The second part of this journal will be about the journey home--not away. To see Mom.

I am working on a Flicker Stream of photographs I took over the past three weeks. Some of them are exquisite. I'll put up a link here and write up some events I did not have time to record the past three weeks before I head home.

Bears

Ever since I heard Mr. Chocolate eat his friend, Tim Treadwell, in Grizzly Man, I've been a little scared of bears. I mentioned below that when I heard some unnamed thing growl at me from the woods a couple weeks ago, I fled screaming back to my tent to land right on top of A. while I was still squealing in dismay. Now, A.'s response was to tell me that first of all what had growled at me was probably not a bear and second of all, if it had been, it was probably a friendly bear. "The bears around here are so socialized they probably wouldn't hurt a fly," he said. Right.

That's why whenever you go into national parks, you are presented with numerous written materials and guides on what to do if you encounter a bear both in the woods and at a distance. None of these leaflets, guides, hand-outs remotely suggest bears are friendly. Rather, they suggest, oh, you should sortof be a bit concerned when encountering one of them. It's also why huge signs are posted, it seems, every ten feet or so that state the following: All bears are dangerous. Do not feed them. Do not get out of your car. Do not go near them. I get the point, and so I've no intention of befriending a bear. Or even getting near one. But in case I do, I have memorized the two types of ways to respond to how a bear is attacking you. There are steps to this.

Step 1: Determine why the bear is attacking you. Now, this is easier than it sounds. Just ask yourself, hey, did I surprise the bear? Is he scared of me? Riggghhhht. Now, if the bear is scared of you, you should proceed to step 2A: Just play dead, but while you're doing it, be sure and lay on your stomach and cover the back of your neck and head. The bear will probably then stop being scared of you and you can be "pretty sure" the attack will end in a couple minutes. If the bear was NOT scared of you, but has been stalking you, for example, on a trail, or attacking you in your tent and the bear catches you, proceed to step 2B: Fight! Fight the bear as hard as you can! Scream, yell, hit the bear, spray it with some stuff, not Off, but some bear stuff. But if the bear does catch you, then keep fighting until, oh some point which is never precisely specified, you lay on your stomach and cover the back of your neck and head. Yay.

None of the materials I've ever found address step 2C, which might have been useful in cases you encounter Mr. Chocolate when the bear was neither scared of you, nor stalking you, but just apparently decided to eat you for the heck of it. Well, this morning at Mount Revelstoke, when the nice gal at the entry kiosk told me casually, (I detected deliberate casualness in her voice), "Oh, hey, a scout just went up with a telemetry device to check on a bear that's been acting up in the area, just to let ya know." (By the way, she told me this right after she told me they might have to close the mountain down that afternoon due to lightning fires.) "What do you mean, a bear that's been acting up?" I asked her. I mean how do bears ACT UP? What more can they do to you than they already do, which is try to kill you for a variety of reasons? "Oh, hey," she said, detecting my alarm, "I mean we have a collar on the fellow. Just make loud noises on the trail, the scout's up there, it should be fine." I stared at her. "You have a collar on it? What FOR?" "To track it," she explained patiently as one or two cars arrived behind me. "Where is it?" I ask her, "I want to avoid that area." "Well, we don't rightly know, at the moment, but we'll find him! Hey, just make noise on the trails, ya know." I checked the rearview mirror and detected an impatient grimmace on the face of the driver behind me. "Fine," I said, gunning the engine unintentionally and lurching up the mountain. I'm not getting out of the car, I told myself as I headed up a grade 7% road towards, Mr. Chocolate.

I said all this to say that I appear to be the only person in the entire state of Canada that pays attention to the literature on bears. The pic? Well, it's what everyone ELSE does when they see a bear in Canadian National Parks. I noticed this large crowd of people on the side of the road and slowed down to inquire as to what they were looking at. And a five year old told me it was a bear. "Ya see it there?" he asked me sweetly, "Over next to that tree?" "No," I told him, "But if you get a chance to chat with him, tell him I said 'Hi.'" (All this occurred in an avalanche zone around 100 yards past a sign that warned: "If you see a bear, do not get out of your car. They are dangerous.") Heh.

Motel(s) Hell

Cave painting began in caves for a reason. Art originated with hairy hominids stuck inside their caves while mammoths and t-rexes prowled around screaming outside. Cavemen couldn't leave the cave, and they had nothing else to do. Bored, crazed, they were stuck in the cave only with their fantasies, so they drew them. In these hunts, they were always the winner.

Same thing has happened to me twice this past two weeks. I'd call this poor planning, but really it was a decision not to plan. Understand, I just came out of a job where I was the ultimate contingency planner. I planned everything. In my job as a program manager, I turned over mental rocks for hours at a time--what if this happens, what if that happens, what if the other thing happens, what then? Well, somewhere in all this planning, I decided I was sick of planning, which never did any good anyhow. So for this trip I did not plan. The outcome of this "project" has been a bit predictable. (I'll go into that a bit more later, but anyhow...)

I found myself last week stuck in a place called the Vistal Motel. Well, I thought I was stuck, or I sorta was. I landed in this place when I could find no other lodging near Glacier National Park. No cabin, no campsite, no posh 4 star hotel, no pedestrian chain hotel had availability. Just--the Vista Motel, self-described as the best lodging in Glacier National Park. Well, let me describe this place to you. The "gnoll" it rests above is about 20 feet from a major highway and railroad tracks. I'm surprised there was not a bus depot and a small airport with a helipad to complete the motel's ambiance, but these remain new opportunities for annoying those trying to sleep at the Vista. Rooms are bare of any amenties, except digital alarm clocks, which the cleaning staff are sure to set helpfully for 5 AM even after you've disabled it once. Rooms have no air conditioning, and of course the windows won't open. If you open your door to get some wind, you will be facing a hairy, miserable-looking guy who is sitting outside his room in his bathrobe because he, too, is hot, and his windows probably won't open either. Bathrooms are super retro--back to the days of water closets. The bed's coverlet (the bed takes up most of the entire room)looks like a vomit pattern of forest green and melon--you know the mid-90's version of decorating. For entertainment, you have thin walls, extra thin, so you can hear Cheryl and some unnamed guy have a discussion about the seriousness--or not--of their relationship. The man reassured Cheryl repeatedly that he was in a good place to make a decision, but he had not made it yet. Gods.

In any case, I tried to avoid this place, except I actually had to come back to it to sleep, and when I'd get there, sleep was well-nigh impossible. I had with me no paper, no laptop, no book. My tools of distraction included an Ipod and a cell phone. The result of my extreme discomfort is a series of cell pictures, which I called "Unsatisfacory Porn," and which, thank God, I was not able to upload as a group to Facebook because I couldn't get a good enough signal. These pictures included the following: a sorta cute picture of my face half-concealed by a pillow. Me biting the pillow (to reflect my mood). A shot of my clothed boobs wearing my "Cute but Psycho" Bunny-Rabbit T-shirt. A shot of my tattoo. A close-up of my teeth. A shot of the goddamned ceiling light, which had a bug in it. I dunno, at the time, I thought it was funny. That was night one.

Night two had me surrendering to it all. I decided to get as stoned as I completely could, to test the limits. I was successful. I then decided to dance as hard as I could to whatever struck my fancy on my IPOD for as long as I could. Faves that night were Cheap Trick, "I Want You to Want Me" and "Dream Police" and R.E.M., "I Am Superman." I kept hoping that Cheryl and that guy could hear every huff and bump as I lept around the two feet of space between the bed and any single wall, and I hoped they were wondering what the hell I was up to. Turn about is fair play after all.

Although I had booked this stupid place for three nights, night 3 did not happen because I finally fled this place at 5:30 AM the morning following my stoned dance routine. Although I had prepaid for three nights, there was no lock-box to put the key in, so I left it on the bed, along with a voicemail demanding a refund to the manager. I checked my credit card yesterday to see if they'd refunded me, and found they not only had not, but they'd charged me twice, so I've paid over 700$ total for that treat. Insult to injury, and so now I shall have to spend time straightening that out.

Having learned my lesson, I thought, two days ago I found the place I am now in. It's a Days Inn described as 16.1 KM from Jasper and listed as a Jasper-Hinton Motel. Welp, apparently 16.1 KM from Jasper means to them, the PARK rather than the town. The place is actually around 60 MILES from the town Jasper, which is where I'd planned to stay. You'd think I would have realized something was up, but my GPS seems somewhat freaked out by Canada and rather than give wrong information, coyly informs me repeatedly, "Unable to give guidance from this road." Upon arrival at this otherwise acceptable motel, I mentioned the misleading nature of their website. The nice guy behind the desk nodded and said, "Yeah, I've heard that before" and asked me if I still wanted to stay. I'd planned 2 nights here, but told him I would only take the 1. He gave me some free laundry soap in sympathy. Well, now I'm homeless.

I'm also up at 3:30 AM doing laundry and writing, while the nice guy at the front desk watches "King of the Hill." It's obvious to me now, bad motels or caves is how cave painting got its start. I've done more writing and more picture-taking since being stuck in bad motels than I have in years. Oh, the picture will look familiar to someone and is why I'm fifty miles from not-nowhere. Canadian Rockies--heartbreakingly beautiful, and I will enjoy more of them tomorrow.

GNP, Part II or "Ronald & Dusty Discuss Deep Shit"

(With apologies to Kruder & Dorfmeister)

Glacier National Park has an extensive shuttle system that traverses the Going-to-the-Sun Road, which from this point forward has been renamed by me to the About-to-Fall-Off-A-Cliff-Highway. The road is crumbly, in disrepair, pot-holed, and narrows meanly to a single lane at numerous points. To mitigate for the sorry state of the road, shuttles haul campers, climbers, hikers, and folks just too chicken to drive it themselves up and over the Continental Divide every fifteeen minutes. For free you get to go to the sun rather than hurdle to your death--not a bad deal.

Anyhow, I was on a shuttle with a guy named Ronald. Three times. Ronald looked like a hippy version of Colonel Sanders, and he was on a mission. See, Ronald got called by God a couple days ago to go to Glacier National Park and witness his "wonders." Ronald had not been expecting this summons, nor had he been expecting to be re-diagnosed with cancer a couple days prior to the summons. But when God told Ronald to go to Glacier National Park last Thursday, Ronald went. My encounters with Ronald were mostly unremarkable as he was involved in telling anyone who would listen (I was trying to hide myself in the corners of any shuttle he was on) about his past as a bad Italian businessman who had stage 4 cancer previously who had been cured by the Lord around six years ago and who knew Elvis Presley and was friends with him and who owned a 34 foot motor home, etc. etc. Because Ronald was sick, perfect strangers often entered in the most bizarre conversations with him, many of which I overheard.

My luck in avoiding active discussions with Ronald ran out day 2. I got on a shuttle and there was Ronald and oddly, just one other guy, the driver. I headed to the back corner of the shuttle to sit low and listen miserably to Ronald tell the driver, Dusty, about his cancer, about his summons from God, and about the fact he knew Elvis Presley, who, by the way, wore both a Star of David and a cross, because, Ronald said, "Elvis liked them both." Dusty, it turned out, was a Penecostal preacher who just happened to also drive a shuttle bus this summer in Glacier National Park before heading up to Alaska to open a church in Cordoba. This is roughly the conversation that ensued.

Dusty: It's no accident we three are on this shuttle together today. Do you believe you can be healed, Ronald?

Ronald: I don't know if God will take this cancer away.

Dusty: If God can make mountains like this, he can heal you Ronald.

Ronald: I don't believe in chance. There's a reason we three are here. Let's pray.

Me [pointing]: There's a couple of mountain goats.

Ronald: We're all in this together, young lady, anytime you start thinking you're really alone, you might as well commit suicide.

Dusty: Gods' wonders are all around us. I'm amazed and in awe every day I come to work. He can heal you Ronald. We three can pray about it.

Me [politely]: You must really like your job.

Dusty: I do, I do. Every day, the Lord shows himself to me.

Ronald: Well, pray for me.

Dusty: I will and for her, too.

Now, it might have seemed mean-spirited of me to point out the mountain goats. I really was not trying to change the subject, but was genuinely excited to see the goats, and I'm sure the guy really does like his job. And I suppose the prayers didn't hurt anything either...I couldn't help it when I said, "OK, but please, please don't close your eyes." At least they laughed.

Ronald, I'm praying for you. Good luck. Picture is of view outside that shuttle, which delivered us all safely to Avalanche Creek. Amen.

Glacier National Park, Part One

In my possession are pictures of heaven. Unretouched, unairbrushed, unmanipulated pictures of what you dream of heaven being like. The placid appearance of this lake along Chief Mountain Highway is an illusion, for there was a group of six ducklings playing there, along with numerous geese and terns, who were squawking, diving, and scrounging for fish. I found this spot outside the park, of all things, after I'd grumpily fled my hot, annoying, boring, crazily-overpriced motel room at 5 AM and went out to take pictures. I was mad and irritable and fussy with most of them as I took them, but in looking them over on this Calgary computer, I think they are a lot better than I thought they would be as I was crawling through fields of wildflower weeds at 6 AM to try and get good angles.

The drive up to Calgary was great. Breakfast was buttermilk out of a carton and a homemade bear claw I bought on the Blackfoot Reservation from a friendly guy this morning. On the drive north, I found a red mustang GT owner who wanted to play on Highway 2. We tore it up through both light and heavy traffic, and sad to say, he won, but it is always fun discovering a fellow dumbass who wants to race on the open highway. This trip, there have been 3 such folks, and until now the gamest guy was driving a Ford Focus on Hells Canyon Highway. A. was routing for him because he drives a Focus, but I merely toyed with that one. Today, though, was real competition. I think I was possibly just a bit timid being in Canada, as weird as that sounds. I also photographed some massive white wind turbines against a brilliant blue sky I saw on a detour when I headed north rather than east from Pincher Creek. I am so glad I made that wrong turn due to my GPS not recognizing the farm road. The photos I got of them are very cool.

I can't wait to head to Banff tomorrow. I have checked with the desk to see if there is a small tour I can do of Calgary before heading out. Seems like I should do that, since I'm here. The downtown area I've driven through, and it looks like a typical, smallish city--nothing too exciting or interesting.

Wolf Watching in Yellowstone

Sitting at hotel computer in Missoula where I've decided to land for a few days before heading north. I'm a bit tired from all the driving, and the car has been closely-packed with too much gear. It feels good to get out of it. Tired of the smell of citronella candles, being surrounded by tarps, crushed packages of saltines, and empty cans of orange soda and tired (already) of my Ipod playlist. I'll be glad to rest up and get the car clear of this stuff--some of which A. is taking home with him tonight. I'm drinking coffee (Seattle's Best) with cream, enjoying an orange and thinking about yesterday AM in the Lamar Valley. Wolf watching is one of the most amazing and interesting opportunities Yellowstone affords, but it requires some canny preparation and expensive gear. (This is easily found for rent at a modest cost for those of us who don't spend our lives wolf-watching.)

Anyhow, yesterday morning got up at 3:45 AM and took a warmish shower before heading out into the cold. Bison and elk that graze on the hills in the Northeastern corner of Yellowstone make this spot ideal for watching predators hunt the herds. While there was no shortage of folks to show me how to use my spotting scope (this piece of gear is a tripod mounted, high-powered wild-life viewing gizmo), I failed to spot a wolf on my own. But there were plenty of people there with various kinds of devices (radio gizmos that scanned for wolf activity, binoculars, other kinds of scopes) that allowed me finally to spot a black wolf. No field guide or expertise, however, allows me to comment on either the sex or type of this particular wolf. I can tell you that this lone wolf that decided to kick it beside a river around half a mile from where I was watching it. It had a big tongue and was panting in the early morning cold, making me wonder if it was sick or maybe it was just lazy. However, this wolf looked like a bison could kick its ass, so I was not witness to any triumph of wolf-kind yesterday morning. Anyhow, that was my wolf in Yellowstone. I was told wolf-watching is often a far more exciting thing to do, and I believe the folks who told me that. Some of them have been doing it for years and the early-morning crowd was a global group, not just Americans.

The picture's not very interesting, but you can see the Indefensible, along with my early AM companions in Lamar Valley. It was taken at around 5:00 AM, so the light is artificially brightened. The wolf--well--imagine it about half a mile up the hill pictured, laying on its stomach beside a river and probably wondering what the heck all the weirdos down on the road are up to. :)

Yellowstone - Wild Earth

Warning: I shall revisit this topic numerous times, hopefully in a more focused fashion. First, Montana is full of some of the friendliest, outgoing people I've met anywhere. And why wouldn't they be?!? They have YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK to play in! 2.2 million acres of biodiversity that includes rare, large mammals like bison, elk, and bears roaming free to cause traffic jams in immense valleys crossed by hundreds of streams and rivers. 2.2 million acres of geothermal "features" that include hot springs, fumaroles, geysers, mud volcanoes, and steaming pots of bubbling stuff that smell sulphurous and look menacing. Mountains of sublime beauty with pine that smells like mint. Hosted star parties (next week, drat :() and early morning gatherings of people from around the globe lined up below herds grazing distant hills to catch glimpses of wolves hunting early in the morning.

How funny that I planned to "drive through" Yellowstone on the way to somewhere else. I could reach some conclusions about life, I s'pose, if I wanted to...but I'm in too good a mood to bother with that!

Beartooth Highway

Drinking a latte in Red Lodge, MT. I find the interwebs are pervasive these days. Even in the remotest of spots and with no laptop, it's quite easy to blog. Yellowstone (arrived yesterday afternoon) is so immense, so expansive, so interesting, so overwhelming, that I believe I will return to the area for a week after I drop A. off in Missoula Friday. I've fallen in love with Montana.
This morning, A. and I got up early and drove Beartooth Highway, a sixty mile drive from Cooke City (where we are staying just outside Yellowstone) to Red Lodge, Montana. I have a driving guide written by photographers for Life Magazine who agreed with Charles Kurault that this short road that winds between Montana and Wyoming and spans the Continental Divide is among the best, if not the best, drives in North America. After having driven it myself, I say it's in my top two. It rivals in expansiveness and drama Big Sur and Highway 1. The views are forever, and I could feel my spirit lift just being here.

Blue

Randomly, I once typed my favorite color, blue, into Google image search. As I recall my experiment, I was testing a theory about adjectives, that they are merely commonly-held generalizations that "pretty up" writing and make it suspicious. Adjectives and adverbs are not to be trusted, I believe. Nouns are stronger.

Google's results for "blue" included a lake in southern Oregon, Crater Lake. Now I'd some vague notion of what this lake was--wrong--that somewhere in California a large meteor had hit the earth creating a big hole and a big lake. Throw in a cooked-up perception of mystery, possibly coupled with Martians landing there or some such, and that was my idea of Crater Lake. I always find it amusing that apparently what I don't know I will make up--wrong. Crater Lake was not caused by a meteor, I read. However, the image of this lake, like sapphire under a gloamy sky brooding deep in a volcanic caldera, not only defined for me why I love blue, but intrigued me. The link for "Crater Lake" I cut and pasted into my "Things to do someday" folder that I keep on my desktop computer.

So someday arrived. (I love it when that happens!) Crater Lake is blue. (Adjective) It is beautiful. (Adjective) It is friggin big (6 miles across). It is deep (Approximately 2000 feet at its deepest.) It is surrounded by 2000 foot drop, glaciated cliffs (even in July), and around 2 million damned mosquitoes, many of whom are fattened with my DNA now. The landscape going up to it is decimated, pumice dessert caused by an eruption approximately 8000 years ago. Another baby volcano (Wizard Island) has pushed up from the depths of the lake. I photographed Crater Lake at sunrise, at noon, at dusk, and I never remotely captured anything about it that shows how it makes you feel--like the Grand Canyon--it's pretty much indescribable. My photographs are pitiful.

Along with this, A. and I camped under the stars. Clothes smelling of woodsmoke, skin sweetened with Off, I ran screaming from, I thought, a bear and landed back in the tent on my ass in the middle of the freezing night, we ate bacon and eggs, we smoked out, I listened to the 9th symphony while laying on a picnic table looking at stars so bright I could touch them. I am burned a little from the sun, my hair is frazzled from bug spray, A's feet are covered in bug bites, but....it was beautiful. Adjective and not a lie, my friends. :)

Portland - Japanese Gardens

In Portland, kicked things off for this trip right (or wrong) depending on your perspective. Stayed one night at posh Hotel Lucia because I had got a deal on PriceLine. Lucia has its nose in the right place, so to speak. You know you've found a great hotel when you are well-nigh joyfully tackled by 3 doormen upon arrival and the concierge looks grateful you've smiled at him. My PriceLine bargain ended when I discovered, however, (again) why it's never a good deal to stay in a posh hotel if you're trying to save money. A number of modest tips, valet parking, room service, in-room movies, two candy bars from the "Honor Bar" later, and I might as well have been staying at the Ritz-Carlton. Hotel Lucia is pretty nice though with lots of cool photographs and art to look at and a super soft, comfy bed with high-thread count sheets, just as they ought to be!

A. and I then headed over to more familiar territory, stoner-donut world, Voodoo Donut, the only place I know of where you can get a maple bar with bacon on top of it. This donut is surprisingly good, but is especially pleasant augmented with the right intoxicants and eaten just before a stroll through the Japanese Gardens in Washington park. Lovely morning. I had a picture of the maple donut bar (with bacon on top), but decided a picture of the gardens might be more memorable.

Going-to-the-sun Road: Weeks 1, 2, 3 Roughly

Typically, I almost forgot my passport and would not have thought about it had I not been scrounging for Ipod accoutrements. I'm leaving in ten minutes and finishing up here. Last tasks are to send my Mom a short note/card, assemble my reservations--such as they are. Not many of those. My landlord will water my plants and collect my mail.

Here's the first 3 weeks of this trip, and I will try to post some pictures and notes along the way.

1--Oregon (Portland, Oregon Coast/Highway 1, Rogue-Upqua Scenic Byway and Crater Lake National Park, Hells Canyon)
2--Wyoming/Montana (Shoshone Falls, Yellowstone National Park, Beartooth Highway)
3--Montana/Canadian Rockies (Glacier Lake National Park, Going-to-the-sun Road, and North up to Jasper via Banf)

Eventual objective is to drive to Prince Rupert Sound--goal Seward Highway on the Kenai Peninsula. I don't know yet if I will catch ferry up the inside passage, taking my car, or fly to Anchorage, come back, retrieve it...that might be easier and cheaper, but probably less fun. And we can't have that, can we?

If someone asks, this is where I'll be....

I owned a house once my ex-husband bought to please me without consulting me. The experience was a disaster. I had no clue what to do with a house. I had no desire to decorate or to purchase furniture to put inside it, no desire to vaccum its carpets and scrub its toilets, no pride of ownership in it. Weeds grew around it while I watched in dismay and surprise, as though I never knew weeds grew around houses. Dogs began to inhabit the backyard. Neighbors came over, church people showed up. But I had no desire to own this house, no desire to make a garden, no desire to own two dogs, two rabbits, two kids, two thousand church friends, and no desire to actually be in the house. I had no desire to be married either, although I did love my ex-husband. He's still a friend of mine, as friends go--by that I mean, he could call me and ask me for almost anything, and I'd try to do it. I'm sure--truly--he knows this, though he doesn't call very often. He did show up out of the blue to take me out to dinner the last time I was in Dallas--with his second wife's permission. I know if I were her I would not appreciate this, but she is not me, so I went with alacrity. Dinner is dinner after all, and I do love him. I just did not want to be married to him or own a house. I wonder if this sums up our relationship?

Anyhow, I was asked recently what my car says about me by a person who's known me a long time. I'm not sure it says much of anything about me, although the brand moguls who would have me believe it does would like me to believe it. What it says is that I chose this car. I bought it myself. No one chose it to surprise me, no one will pay for it to make me happy, no one will clean it but me, there won't be dogs in the backseat, or kids throwing up on the carpet. I chose it because I liked its shape, I liked its feel, I liked the idea of owning a convertible for grown-ups instead of children. I like that on I5 last week a guy with a BMW pulled even, we traded looks, and then the race was on through light traffic south towards Mount Rainier, which looked beautiful in the morning sun. To our mutual amusement I'm sure. I like that I won.

Mostly, I like that this car moves. It moves. It moves. It moves. And I do clean it and I do pamper it and I do enjoy it and I do want it. Nothing about it surprises me. The car makes no sense to the person who asked me because the whole of my life has been spent mostly not wanting--anything. Spent in giving myself away to others, to causes, to sometimes living in a family I did not actually want to be in, spent "unselfishly" without materialism. So inexplicably despite a long-held anti-materialistic bent I have always had that had me writing checks for this or that cause, serving food to the homeless, volunteering in hospitals, this tendency that makes me reluctant to spend money on clothes, make-up, jewelry, fine furnishings, nice carpets, homes, I wanted this car. People are complicated.

That's about all this car says about me. I wanted it. I got it. This is where I'll be. Because of those things, I enjoy it.

Home is where I want to be
Pick me up and turn me round
I feel numb - born with a weak heart
I guess I must be having fun
The less we say about it the better
Make it up as we go along
Feet on the ground
Head in the sky
It's ok I know nothing's wrong . . nothing

Hi yo I got plenty of time
Hi yo you got light in your eyes
And you're standing here beside me
I love the passing of time
Never for money
Always for love
Cover up and say goodnight . . . say goodnight

Home - is where I want to be
But I guess I'm already there
I come home - she lifted up her wings
Guess that this must be the place
I can't tell one from another
Did I find you, or you find me?
There was a time Before we were born
If someone asks, this is where I'll be . . . where I'll be...

A Quality of Light

I am from big-sky, blinding-sun country where the earth is flat, and nothing obscures the intense blue of the horizon. Texas summers are hot, sticky, and full of wondrous smells and sounds. These are about the only thing that makes them tolerable: sweet mimosa and honeysuckle, the watermelony smell of freshly-cut St. Augustine grass, the whirr of a thousand cicadas as night falls. You might as well be a lizard and enjoy the bright heat. In Texas, in summer your life will be bare-rock sensations where you bake and squint and sweat, and scurry-- from house to pool to car (air conditioned) to keep the naked light sun at bay. Even lounging outside in this unfiltered heat can be exhausting.

I've tried to describe where I live to folks back home who have not visited me. The first thing I talk about is the light--the quality of light in the summer. This land glows when it brightens. The thousand streams and rivers and lakes and the ocean that's wrapped itself into every curve, swell, and inlet create an effect when the sun slips through cloud banks the sensation of living in a golden bowl in summer. It reminds me of that line from Dylan Thomas, when he wrote of his childhood that "the sabbath rang in holy streams." They stare at me uncomprehendingly, my kin who have never been here. Why is she talking about the light? of all things, they may wonder. It's because, I guess, the light is so different from back home where it feels merciless. This quality of immanence, a glow from the land itself has affected the work of artists and photographers, of which I am a naive and pedestrian member. People who have seen my pictures have remarked that they "are proto-typical Northwestern gloom with a hint of light." Well, at least that's what some woman at work who's partner owns an art gallery told me, although the photos I take are not meant to be gloomy. If I see a theme, I suppose I do think they reflect an alien's fascination of where she finds herself, however. I found this quote this morning, and think it's accurate. I love where I live.

Perhaps more than anything else that unites [Pacific Northwestern] artists is the role that the natural environment of the region plays in their work. Portland painter Louis Bunce said of the Pacific Northwest that "nature flows up the streets," and it is true that the lush verdancy of the coastal areas and mountains seems to permeate everything, including its art. The prevalence of earth tones and neutral colors, the quality of light and moist atmospheres one finds in Northwest art, both then and now, is characteristic and expressive of a distinct, regional sensibility. It is for all these reasons that French art critics proclaimed Northwestern artists and photographers an "Ecole du Pacifique."