Mrs. Brown part 2

When I first wrote that post about picking blackberries, it included these paragraphs:

As I gathered the berries a few people crossed the footbridge, grinning at my children but oblivious to me. Only one person, an elderly gentleman, stopped to chat, leaning over the railing as I looked up from the vines below. He told me about a plum tree which grows over by the bead store on Division. There's a plum and an apple tree there, he said; the apple tree is wormy but the plums, they're good.

I'm not familiar with that particular tree, but I've seen plum trees in the older parts of Bend. I suspect they were planted by early Bendites and now -- now that people buy plums from stores -- they're ignored. I am allergic to that kind of plum, unfortunately. I thanked the man anyway and he left.

Later in the afternoon I saw that old man again. He was standing at the entrance to the Mountain View Mall (or whatever they call it now), near the stoplights. He had a sign in one hand, the other outstretched. "Whatever you can give!" he asked passing motorists.

I cut that part because -- what am I trying to say? That only I and the homeless pick wild berries? That a subculture of foragers exists, and I finally met one of them? That Sawyer Park is sketchy?

*

If blackberries are rare here, squaw currant is common as dirt.¹ It's under the ponderosas, under the junipers and in the disturbed areas. In spring squaw currant has white or pink flowers as small as my fingernail and shaped like a trumpet. In July or thereabout a berry forms. It looks like the currants you sometimes find in the store: translucent, tiny, varying from bright red to bright orange.

Currants are edible. I read that in a few places online: All currants are to some degree edible. So I planned to eat them. When I told my sister-in-law my plan, though, she said to be careful; she said there's a berry that looks like a currant but is poisonous. So I looked around and asked around some more, and all I got were contradictions. The squaw currant is edible but it tastes terrible. The currant look-alike is poisonous. My mom has a book which says that "in sufficient quantities" the squaw currant causes burning in the throat. In sufficient quantities? What does
that mean?

I couldn't find out. So although this summer the squaw currant bushes were loaded with berries, I limited myself and my children to 10 berries per day ... and they never harmed us. They taste great, actually. They look like they'd be juicy but instead they're mealy, like a blueberry, and tart/sweet. My daughter loved them.

But! For next year! I found this yesterday (I thank thee, O googlebooks): American Indian Cooking: Recipes from the Southwest By Carolyn J. Niethammer, page 61: a recipe for wild currant preserves with a drawing of the squaw currant bush. She says that the Indians said that large quantities of squaw currants cause gastrointestinal distress, but she also says that this admonishment existed for other Indians, who might be tempted to eat every berry on a bush. Also, she says, they're fine in any quantity when cooked.

So! I know what I'll be doing next July.

*

See, here's what interests me. Central Oregon has what they call a short growing season. The last frost can be as late as the 4th of July; the first frost was this weekend, mid-September. The first frost killed my basil, tomatoes, beans and squash. People say it's hard to grow things here; they say gardening in Central Oregon takes a fantastic amount of work.

But, you know, lots of plants grow here despite the frost. It's not just dirt and rock, not even in the Badlands out east. Lots of plants grow, and surely some of them, like the currant, taste surprisingly good.

I'm not saying that berry- and root-gathering could or should replace commercial food production, but surely it's comparable to hunting & fishing. I know people who supplement their diets with deer, elk, trout, game birds, and they're proud of it, they're snobs about it. Why don't I know anyone -- except the homeless gentleman --who supplements his diet with wild
berries?

¹Ribes cereum

Mrs. Brown and the environmental movement

Written August 31. I keep screwing up the datestamp -- sorry rss readers.

Yesterday afternoon the four of us drove to Sawyer Park, where blackberries grow under the footbridge. In the Willamette Valley this species of blackberry (I think it's the same species) is a thorny scourge, overgrowing highway medians and crowding other plants from streams; people are just as likely to poison the bushes as they are to eat its berries. Here in Bend, though, the blackberry is uncommon. I have only seen it growing in one place besides Sawyer Park. And the berries are so small, y'all would laugh.

I love to gather berries. I had wanted to drive to Salem to pick blueberries, but I was sick throughout July; I wanted to pick strawberries in Prineville but again -- too sick. Dammit, I said, I don't care how tiny those blackberries are. They're in season, they're nearby, they're mine.

The blackberry vines at Sawyer Park grow under the footbridge bridge supports, tangled with willows and spiderwebs, thick and humid. To reach the best berries I had to stand in the thicket, moving carefully so as not to get scratched or hook my clothing. It was hot, uncomfortable work picking those berries, but I couldn't stop -- you know how it is? I'd think I had all the good ones, then I'd see another cluster and pick those, then see another... It's zen-like, berry-picking is. Or obsession.

Remind me I want to write next about squaw currant -- ribes cereum -- which is extremely common here and has a red berry that ripens in July. Sasha loves 'em.

Current

I have some photos to show you (I think) but my kids have escaped into the neighbor's backyard, so I will have to update this post later.

We were talking talking talking, the other women and I, just like a cliched flock of hens: talking talking talking, so that we ran aground in the cattails. I shared a raft with the Woman Who Drinks Only Water and Alcohol, but since between us we had just one paddle, I climbed out to push -- and sunk several inches into the muck. Giggle. The firefighter's wife, who had rolled off her mattress to push, too, lost a flipflop to the stuff. Giggle. We ran aground twice more and once had to half-swim against the wind, which was strong enough to blow our floats back upstream; but our trip was not really marked by excitement. We leaned back and talked talked talked talked.

A few years ago the city built a new bridge over the Deschutes River to accommodate all the new houses on the south end. Round about the same time, they legalized* swimming in the river. Almost immediately, floating down the Deschutes became Bend's greatest past-time.

Most of the people who float the river in summer are, as you'd expect, teenagers; but families float, too. My dad bought a six-person raft and has taken Blake once and both kids once. (The
river is quite cold, but Blake would rather be in the water, buoyed by his lifejacket, than sit peacefully in the raft. It's easier to take him alone.) And then late afternoon Wednesday, my girlfriends and I -- five of us altogether -- spent an hour and a half relaxing into the current.

My husband left work early that afternoon to take the kids off my hands. I cleaned the house as much as possible and had some dinner ideas for him, but they abandoned all that when my dad showed up, and instead they all drove to Mt. Bachelor, where they joined a lot of other astronomy buffs.

I know that many places on this earth are beautiful and beloved by its people, but I tell you: I hope I am able to live the rest of my life here.


*At least, I think so. My husband tells stories of getting busted for swimming in the river back when he was young.

Put your own oxygen mask on first

Last winter I put the kids in daycare three days a week. I worked two 1/2 days, and then I'd snowboard with my sister-in-law for half a day. It was a glorious time but short-lived; soon after ski season ended, the kids' beloved daycare closed and I had to move them to two days at a new daycare + Blake two days at preschool.

But! Beginning this month, preschool is done (Blake is jumping up and down shouting "Yea! No more preschool!") and I've started them again in three days of daycare.

Thus begins

TUESDAY MORNING MOUNTAIN BIKING

I'm going on a bike ride.
It's going to be a good one.
What a beautiful day!
I'm not scared.

Oh oh! Skyliner Road is windy!
Can't drive down it.
Can't fly over it.
Have to keep riding.

Huff puff
Huff puff
Huff puff

I'm going on a bike ride.
It's going to be a good one.
What a beautiful day!
I'm not scared.

Oh oh! The trail winds so tight through the trees!
Can't go off it.
Don't wanna turn around.
Have to keep riding.

Whee!
Whee!
Whee!

I'm going on a bike ride.
It's going to be a good one.
What a beautiful day!
I'm not scared.

Oh oh! Traffic circle in the forest!S
igns only point backward.
Don't know which way to go.
But I have to keep riding.

Don't get lost
Don't get lost
Don't get lost

I'm going on a bike ride.
It's going to be a good one.
What a beautiful day!
I'm not scared.

Oh oh! Uphill switchbacks over lava rock!
Can't go around it.
Can't get off my bike.
Have to ride up it.

Hoo huff
Hoo huff
Hoo huff

I'm going on a bike ride.
It's going to be a good one.
What a beautiful day!
I'm not scared.

Oh oh! Trails split in four directions!
No signs anywhere.
Don't know which way to go.
Ride toward construction sounds.

Beep beep
Beep beep
Beep beep

I'm going on a bike ride.
It's going to be a good one.
What a beautiful day!
I'm not scared.

Oh oh! 5000 square foot houses!
Can't buy one of them.
Can't rent one of them.
Have to ride past them.

Ri-dic-u-lous
Ri-dic-u-lous
Ri-dic-u-lous

I'm going on a bike ride.
It's going to be a good one.
What a beautiful day!
I'm not scared.

Oh oh! I made it home again!
Don't want to go back to work.
Don't want to go get the kids.
Have to keep riding.

With apologies to Michael Rosen.

Spirals

I used to think of time as linear. Consecutive. I lived there, then I lived there, now I live here. First grade, second grade, third grade. I grew taller; I grew up.

I had a friend once, a guy I knew in college, who believed that all moments in time exist simultaneously. He said it's only our consciousness which moves past these moments in a linear way. It made him happy, thinking that his finest moments still existed somehow. His theory made sense to me but I dearly hoped he was wrong -- preferring, in those days, that certain embarrassing moments cease to exist as soon as I could forget about them.

Lately I've been thinking about the characters in one of Ursula LeGuin's books, who consider time to be spiral. The spiral is an important metaphor in the culture she invented for the book, much like the straight line is important in ours. Her people think of going out and coming back, like a yoyo; they think in terms of journey and return. (Book title: "Always Coming Home.")



I am beginning to see time that way, too. I would draw it for you but, you know, this Blogger thing only lets me write in straight lines. It goes like this:



MondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFridayWeekendMondayTuesday



SpringSummerFallWinterSpringSummer



EasterFourthofJulyHalloweenThanksgivingChristmasEasterFourthofJuly



My peas are growing again, as they did the year before and as they will next year. I see bees in the vine maples again; the strawberry flowers are blooming again; mint is growing by the river again. Again, again, again.



As I begin a second year -- and in some cases a third! -- of reading others' blogs, this sense of time winding back around is very strong. We all react to spring the same way, every year, did you know? It's funny and comforting.



Note that I'm not saying we're running on a wheel. Time is not a circle, with one Memorial Day overlain on the previous one. This holiday weekend isn't identical to the last. It's a spiral. The years lie beside each other, not quite touching.

Here, take a look at these spirals. (Oh how I love the internet! These are taken from Wolfram Mathworld): the parabolic spiral and the Cornu spiral:







Think of time shaped like that!

Holes in the lawn

I feed our squirrels. I don't feed them regularly and I don't feed them much, as they are already the nation's fattest squirrels (they eat ponderosa pine nuts). I use the food as a lure. I want those squirrels to spend time on the deck, where my children can see them.

The other day, however, my daughter discovered a bag of unshelled peanuts in the pantry. She shouted, "Squirrel food!" and, before anyone could stop her, dumped the entire bag outside. My neighbor and her children stopped by and we all squatted down to eat some, but really, a whole lotta peanuts remained on the deck.

Throughout that day the squirrels frenzied. Usually not more than one squirrel visits at a time -- they're not family-oriented creatures, those squirrels -- but that day we had up to three of them racing down the ponderosa that grows through the hole in the deck, grabbing a peanut, racing back up. I noticed them burying peanuts in my flower pots. They buried peanuts in all the dirt I loosened for gardening. They made me laugh. The phrase "He's acting squirrelly" has a vivid meaning for me now.

What I forgot is that the squirrels don't live only at my house and, you know, they're not universally beloved. The next evening I heard my kind, elderly neighbor, the one with the lovely green lawn (the only one with a lovely green lawn), shooing at them. When my husband came home she asked if he had noticed their odd behavior. "They're burying things in my yard!" she cried.

Oooops.

Birds in the honeysuckle

I forgot that I forgot to close the study window last night, so when I woke I thought a bird had flown inside. His singing filled the house. Birds sometimes enter my parents' house near Sisters when my parents are away; when they return they find feathers and poop and, once, a hard, tiny body.

But no, the bird had not flown inside. He was outside the study window. I found him perched on a limb of the ponderosa which drops so many dead needles onto my roof. Talking talking talking, that little finch, the same phrase over and over. Every so often the female, who sat on the nest they'd built in the honeysuckle, would call back to him.

I imagine the female was saying, "Do be quiet! Everyone knows you're going to be a father!"

The nest is so close to the house that I can't see it from inside, so after awhile I stepped onto the porch to see her better. I startled her, though, and she flew away.

*

For a few weeks after giving birth for the first time, I felt a kinship with all mothers -- all mothers, human or not. It was very strange. I felt like they were my sisters; I felt like I knew what they were going through (pigs suckling half a dozen babies! ow ow ow!), and also that I could learn from watching their parenting.

I don't feel that way anymore .. but it does please me that those two finches have chosen to give birth at my house. I can't wait to see the babies.

Ekwerkwe

I awoke this morning before anyone else and sat quietly, just sat quietly, in the family room. Raindrops on the skylights, light dim. A few months ago we ordered BendBroadband's version of Tivo, the box for which hums exactly like a fishtank; our refrigerator, it turns out, is also loud. Hmmmmmmmmmm.

I had slept all night in the crack between the kids' bed -- waking once in the night but too leaden to move to my own room. My eyes felt like (to borrow my husband's phrase) two piss holes in the snow.

I remember feeling like this in the mornings on camping trips: feeling stuffed-up and achy and incapable of motion. On camping trips, though, one can always climb outside the tent and stretch in the cold air. One listens to animals rather than mechanical hums. So I stepped out my door to get the newspaper.

It sounded like an aviary out there. So many birds talking! Call layered over call, like people's conversations at a dinner party.

I said hello to the quail crossing the street. They ignored me; but yes, I do feel better now.

Room to roam

Until we moved to Allentown, we lived in small towns. Each of our houses had a huge, huge yard and even more vacant land nearby. We'd spill out the door and play where we landed. We'd sneak over to the beekeeper's, or to the monastery, or down ingo the ravine or through the forest. I don't remember my mother supervising us. She must have; but she must have done so unobtrusively, because I truly do not remember it.

Which is to say: As a child I was free. I had the will to roam the space to do it in.

Then in ninth grade we moved to a house on a small lot (bigger than the lot I have now, but much smaller than we were accustomed to) -- and there was no place to go. We lived in a new development surrounded by other developments. We'd get on our bikes and just ... ride ... in a circle. Houses, houses, houses.

I hated high school. I wonder sometimes whether, you know, high school sucks for everyone; or whether I was unhappy because I was a new kid from the sticks and I had no place to roam.

So now I'm a parent and I moved to a small town, hoping to give my children the same freedom of movement that I enjoyed -- and what happened? My small town of 50,000 grew into a city of 75,000 in less than five years. All the vacant land is growing houses or golf courses. The roads are busy... I know that Bend is not Allentown. The forest service boundary is just 2 miles from here; there's Shevlin Park and there's the river. But still, when I see all the construction continuing despite the fact that none of the houses for sale in my neighborhood has sold in seven months -- well, I get claustrophobic. I worry for our freedom to wander as we please.

Bend calendar:

• Currant bushes beside the lava rocks are flowering; those in cooler spaces, not yet

Quail!

I saw a quail!

A squirrel sat in a flower pot on the deck and I called Sasha over to watch him, funny little squirrel; and we saw a quail! Poppa quail I think, the look-out, perched warily on the top of our neighbor's fence.

Spring spring spring spring spring!

//

Monday we visited the old cemetery near the Camp Polk Meadow Preserve. It reminded me of cemeteries in Russia, where people enclose their plots with fences.

The meadow was filled with spring peepers -- frogs. I took a video so you could hear them. The sound on my computer is busted so you'll have to let me know if the peepers come through the wind and crackling.




Central Oregon calendar:

• Yellow crocuses blooming in my front yard
• The sunniest spots have daffodils blooming; north side of the house, just stalks
• Iris spikes about 2 inches tall

Climb on

Ponderosa pines are known for growing perfectly perfectly straight, but the ones along the Deschutes River are gnarled old things. My sister-in-law says the porcupines do that. She says that when a porcupine builds a nest in a ponderosa, it splits the trunk, forever altering the tree.

Last Sunday while barbequing near the meadow at Cow Camp, my son and I discovered the only ponderosa we will ever be able to climb. It grows sideways, straight out of the bank and over the river. We all walked up and down it.

Thanks, porcupines.

No, not quite

I may have misled you as to the nature of spring in Central Oregon.

It's not green here. The shrubs and deciduous trees look dead. When we walked through Shevlin Park on Sunday and I exclaimed to my brother-in-law, who lives in Portland, that the bitterbrush was getting its leaves, he just laughed at me. Excitement over bitterbrush stubs is funny to someone who lives in the Willamette Valley, where the streets are littered with cherry blossoms.

Still. If you look very, very closely, you'll see new growth.

Bend calendar:

• The hawks are back. I noticed them this week, first time since fall. Leisurely circles overhead.
• A week or two ago the mourning doves again began their familiar cry.
• Redwing blackbird singing by the river.

Sunreturn

Today for the first time the sun is high enough in the sky that at 4:55pm it shines through our west-facing windows and touches the disco ball. Today it was just a glancing touch, but in a few days it'll be a GONG. The disco ball will reflect spots of light all around the kitchen and living room, and the kids will run around trying to catch them.

*

My mom says that the real reason people do a massive spring clean is because of the sun's return -- because now all the dust is visible. And lo, the sun did shine on the disco ball, and lo, the sun did highlight the dust on the stereo and speakers and the fingerprints on all the pictures!

Monday mission: book jacket blurb

The Lure of a Mountain

In the darkest months of the year, a woman leaves her children in the care of others and trudges up a mountain. Every week she does this, stopped by neither snow nor sleet nor howling winds. She is joined in her trek by hundreds of other people, some from towns nearby but others from cities a thousand miles distant. Emergency personnel stand by. Support personnel supply food, water, shelter.

In her most ambitious novel to date, Jen Ponderosa examines the impulses within a quiet, suburban mother which lead her to undertake this dangerous pilgrimage.

The Wilderness Within

This is the story of Jen Ponderosa, a housewife and mother of two who lives in a society that values safety and the reduction of risk above all else. Chafing at what they view as the excessive caution in this society, Jen and a band of "adventurers" begin brief but regular forays into the wilderness areas which surround the town. Upon return they bring a smell of freedom which begins to subvert the quiet order of things. In the conflict which follows, Jen must re-examine her notions of acceptable risk.

This is the second in Andrea's Monday Mission series: a blog post written in the style of a book jacket blurb.

The first is a fair description of my Saturday, on which I snowboarded ALL DAY! (Big thanks to my mother-in-law.) The second is just something I thought of while I was writing the first.

Who I am from

Updated 3/1: Forty years! My parents have been married forty years. I know that because I'm 35, and they were married awhile before I came along. (I'm 35? When did that happen?)

I first saw this meme at Charlotte Otter's. I kept thinking about it because 1> the syntax drove me crazy and 2> her childhood was so place-based and mine was not. I couldn't imagine how I might adapt it... But then I came up with this.

I am from a country so big that I grew up near one ocean and am raising my children near another.

I am from possibility. I am from opportunity. From a father, the 2nd oldest of 13 children, who lived (is living) his dream, who retired to accolades, admiration and respect. Who paid for my college education and encouraged me to do whatever I liked. Who encouraged me to want something and then go get it.

I am from a mother raised on a farm, who knows how to be still so that the animals gather around her, who watches birds everywhere she goes, knows their names and their calls. I am from a mother who values small creatures, who values quiet and harmony. I am from a woman who's proud of her work as a wife and mother, who knows that what she does and who she is matters.

I am from freedom of movement. I am from a childhood lived in three states, six towns. I am from an itinerant early adulthood, I am from travel through 13 countries. I am from parents who own two houses, one on each side of the continent, and who now travel abroad three times a year.

I am from physical grace, from a body strenghtened and controlled, in balance. I am from physical ability. I am from parents who climbed a mountain in their 60s. I am from a sister who raced a half-Ironman.

I am from intelligence. I am from competence. I am from responsibility -- for oneself, and to others.

I am from generosity. I am from a woman who cared for her mother for a decade. I am from parents married for 35 years. I am from sisters who are married to men they loved in high school.

I am from parents who keep their personal lives obscured from their children. I am from emotional stoicism. I am from silence. Yet I am from laughter.

I am not from a place, but I am from a family.

Ssnnooooooooooowww!

After weeks and weeks during which I envied all y'all's tales of snowstorms, we are finally having our own. It makes me so happy. A good storm wakes me up.

Thursday snow fell all day, wet but not slushy, with no wind: the kind of snow that clumps on pine branches and changes the color of the world. It was perfect snowman snow. The kids and I spent the morning constructing a veritable giant which -- just like the giant up the beanstalk -- succumbed to the wiles of a small boy. We tried to make an igloo, too, but hadn't enough snow for a roof; we settled for a fort and hid from the neighbors.

Friday the kids had daycare. I stayed in the house with just my job for company and listened to snow fall onto the roof with every squirrel's movements -- ka-pow! -- as startling as an explosion. I heard each car as it passed, crunching snow; I heard my neighbors' footsteps. Thursday during the snowfall everything got quiet but Friday was loud.

My in-laws' Camp Sherman house is like a den, as I said; it protects its inhabitants from the outside. My house is different. Mine is a modern house: it lets the outside in. Thursday the trees drooping with snow seemed to reach inside. Looking up through the skylights I see the sky through tree limbs just as if I were standing on the forest floor. It's not an old-growth forest far from humans; it's more like a campground with neighbors 50 feet away. Hello everyone! Isn't this wonderful?

A study of the negotation of parental responsibility on a two-parent family

Updated Mar 12. Better late than never. My post won an award! It's my first award. Thanks Mayberry Mom.



Post begins:
This is a mock journal abstract. It was Andrea's idea. It was really, really fun.

In the middle decades of the 20th century in American society, childrearing roles were clear: in a two-parent household, the woman was the primary caregiver. The man may have been involved in caregiving, but he was not primarily responsible for fulfilling the day-to-day, minute-to-minute demands of small children. Now, however, these roles are in flux. In some households, women are still the primary caregivers, and in some, men are the primary caregivers. In yet others the role can vary by month, by day or by hour, depending on various factors.

We are interested in households in which the role of primary caregiver switches between the two parents over the course of a single day. How do they manage the hand-off? Are the children aware of which parent is on-duty, so to speak?

To address these questions we studied a single household in a small Oregon town on one day. The family includes a father who works outside the home, a mother who works part-time, and two children ages 5 and 2. On the day we visited this family, the children were not in daycare and the mother did no office work. The father left before anyone had woken, returning home at approximately 6:30pm. Both children were in bed at 9pm. Over a period of 2 1/2 hours, then, the parents were both in the house, constantly negotiating who was primarily caregiver.

For most of the evening the atmosphere in the house was not tense. The child* was always within arm's reach of one parent or the other and it did appear clear to both him and the parents that the adult nearby was the one in charge of him. (He did not, for example, misdirect requests for food or water.) For most of this time the hand-off occurred with no visible negotiation. We did not witness any gestures nor hear any statements regarding the swapping of responsibility.

However, there were two notable exceptions:

* At approximately 8:30 pm, the mother said, "You got to take 1/2 an hour in the bathroom. Now it's my turn!" She then retired to the master bedroom, leaving the child with his father.

* At approximately 9pm the father was heard to say, "It's time for bed now, Blake. Mom will help you brush your teeth." As the mother was still in the master bedroom at that time (but clearly was able to hear the statement), we infer that the father was stating his desire to reliquish his role as primary caregiver. This inference was later corroborated in a follow-up interview.

In conclusion, it appears that parents use a sophisticated form of ESP to communicate which of them is primarily responsible for the children. The children are included in this "invisible" communication. That system breaks down as bedtime nears, when parents and children must rely on the spoken word -- usually uttered in a raised voice -- to communicate their roles.

*Design notes: Because the mother was the only adult at home with the children from the moment she woke until the father returned, she assumed the role of primary caregiver for those eleven hours. At the time he returned, the youngest child had fallen asleep on the kitchen floor (a situation we were led to believe is unusual) and was put to bed by the mother. It is therefore possible that our sample size was too small and duration too limited. More study is needed.

Ah, this is the life

RSS: small edits at 7:15p. Really, I shouldn't read these after I post!

In winter my in-laws’ house in Camp Sherman is like a den. Snow calves off the roof into piles before the picture windows, foreshortening the view and blocking the light. It’s a wooden house, made not of logs but of rough-hewn lumber, unpainted: so one might also say it’s like the inside of a tree, if the tree had a stone fireplace in its center.

For a day or two in winter, maybe as long as a week, the house feels safe. It is the cozy center of the world. Then it becomes both claustrophobic and lonely, like a cage. The internet says 250 people live in Camp Sherman, but I can’t imagine where they all are. Hidden among the trees, I guess. To borrow Laura Ingalls Wilder’s description of her little house: “The great, dark trees of the Big Woods stood all around the house, and beyond them were other trees and beyond them were more trees. As far as a man could go to the north in a day, or a week, or a whole month, there was nothing but woods.” Woods and mountains.

So my husband and I only visit the Camp Sherman house in winter when we know there’ll be a crowd, a noisy and boistrous group generating its own light. We made an exception this past weekend for some friends of ours – a couple and their 4-year-old son – who requested some time out there. OK, we said; let’s embrace the idea. We’ll ski at Hoodoo! We’ll snowshoe! We’ll sled! Then we’ll come home to soup and a blazing fire!

It was 65 degrees on Saturday.

We adults basked in the sun on the deck, coatless, shoeless, slurping cans of PBR. So content we barely spoke at all. Ah! This is the life! The children did no basking, of course; they ran playing with sticks and rocks and boxes and (yes) plastic dinosaurs. All three ended up in Lake Creek, the boys up to their waists. This distressed the other mother (her son had a cough). Her husband kept exclaiming, “They’re boys!” in a way that suggested the inevitability of their dunking; I think he meant to say that it was fun. The kids certainly enjoyed it – right up to the moment at which they were abruptly, unbearably cold. Then we adults laughed to hear their boots squish as they walked. “Catch any salmon in those boots?”

The kids threw rocks. Sasha chased the geese. Blake lost a shoe to the mud. I built a catapult for them but Blake had recently seen “Pippi Longstocking” and wanted instead an airplane that can be pedalled; he and Talkative Boy devised a plan to fly to Mexico and dive for treasure. We drove to the fish hatchery, nearly losing a car to the mud; then we walked to the Metolius (where I took yesterday's picture). We brought entirely too much food and ate it all.

We woke Sunday morning to snow squalls.

Homeward! Escape homeward!

Sacrifice

RSS note: I enlarged the photo.

We often say that by living here, we're making a sacrifice. Our friends say this too. We mean financial sacrifice, mostly (Central Oregon pays notoriously low wages), but the complaint also may refer to Bend's cultural or retail offerings.

On the other hand.



Yesterday: Blake clambering over a downed ponderosa near the fish hatchery, Camp Sherman, OR.

Friday morning snowboarding

Rewritten 2:44pm

Weather report from Mt. Bachelor at 8am: 32 degrees, raining, moderate to strong winds; more than half of the lifts on stand-by.

Er.

I still wanted to check it out, but Artist Sister-in-law said it would be a waste of gasoline. So, so. I brought the kids to my neighbor's house anyway and Artist Sister and I walked up Pilot Butte. Wet dirt underfoot, the smell of sage and juniper in the air. Mountains had disappeared into the gray sky. So much of this landscape is just stones and sky.

Hello, we said. Hi, how ya doin', hi, hello: lots of other people chose to walk the butte this morning, too.

Stones and sky -- and junipers.

Saturday morning snowboarding

Old snow up there: hard, icy, covered in tree debris. Some exposed rocks. Wispy clouds hung on the summit of South Sister in the morning, then traversed the gap to Mt. Bachelor. At first we said, "It's fogging!" because the air seemed to condense onto our goggles. Then it turned to ordinary rain.

Sometimes snowboarding is swooshy and peaceful, but on Saturday it was loud. Board scrrrrratch, scrrratch, scrratching against the ice, and running so fast into the wind -- well, it was like hanging my head outside a car window. And of course every so often I'd shout whee-haa! Partly in fear of falling at speed and partly (simultaneously) for the joy of it.

*

The competition was cool. I watched a little from the Pine Marten chair -- just practice, I think. Those kids fly!

Ponderosas

RSS note: Republished to remove photo

Jennifer from Penguin Unearthed did that green meme about a tree in her yard, the Port Jackson fig. It sounds like a noisy, boisterous, fecund tree and I would love to see it in person. It is not at all like a ponderosa. I was thinking about this around 4am, after I'd coughed myself awake and couldn't fall asleep again.

Ponderosa trees grow very tall and very straight. Their branches start up high, typically higher than my one-storey house*, so we humans experience them more as trunks than as trees. If you are in a neighborhood rather than a forest, they're like poles; they're background; you barely notice them.


Here's a picture of wee Sasha in our front yard, May 2006. The tree trunk you see in the background is a ponderosa.

[picture removed]

And these are baby trees.

I live pretty close to where the mill used to be, so I figure this place was logged in the 1920s, maybe 1930s, which would make the eldest ponderosas about 85 years old. Infants! You can see a more mature ponderosa forest around the Camp Sherman area, which wasn't logged in the same way. Here's Blake alongside Jack Creek in 2002:

The needles of ponderosa starts are the same size as the needles on an "adult" ponderosa, which makes the starts look ridiculous. I mean, in some cases the needles are as long as the tree itself. Young ponderosas -- those my age, for example -- have a black trunk; as they grow older, the bark turns an orange brown. When the morning sun strikes them, they look like gold.

Anyway. That's what I was thinking about at 4am this morning.

*The trees in my neighborhood have been limbed. But still. A person could never climb a ponderosa by grasping onto its lowest branch. (And now a whole lotta Bendites are going to write me with exceptions. But! You know what I mean!)

The green meme, var. 1

I'm editing this to link to a few other bloggers who wrote about trees they love. These trees have layers of meaning for them which I find fascinating.

Jennifer from Penguin Unearthed: on the Port Jackson fig which takes up her whole yard and her grandmother's pohutukawa tree, which grows on the beach in New Zealand

Sandy from Imponderabilia of Actual Life: the elm tree in her yard which died and yet continued to nourish several species, including human

Anthromama: the maple from which she made leaf crowns for the children

And then I elaborated on the ponderosa.

*

Think of the plants (trees, flowers, etc) which grow within 50 yards of your home. Which is your favorite?

Ponderosa pine tree, pinus ponderosa.

Is any portion of this plant edible in any form? Can you boil the root, eat the berries, make tea from the leaves?

I haven't ever done this, but one could eat the seeds raw. They're small, it would be a lot of work to get a handful. Also one could grind them and use them as flour.

Can you use any portion of this plant to make something that would be truly useful for you? Alternately, can you use any portion of this plant to make something just for fun, just one time?

One could make a basket from the pine needles. They teach classes on it at COCC. I personally could use such a basket for holding dirty laundry, if it were big enough. Or to hold the children's toys.

If I were willing to cut my trees down (and allowed to by law) and had them processed at a mill, I could sell the wood; or I could give the wood to a craftsman and have him make some funiture.

The pitch is awfully sticky, I'm sure I could use that for something.

Can this plant survive on the groundwater available to it, or does it need to be watered?

It can survive on its own. In fact my trees would probably do better if I stopped watering my lawn.

Do you see any other creatures -- birds or bees or squirrels -- using this plant?

Squirrels break open the pinecones and eat the seeds. The blue jays might eat the seeds, too, I'm not sure. Woodpeckers (the flicker) eat the bugs out of it. Black ants live off it.

What does this plant look like right now, during this season and at the time of day you're writing?

It's January 17 around 3pm. The tree out my study window is sick, I think, because it has a lot of dead needles and there's pitch oozing out one side. It looks the same as it does at any time of year; it's not seasonally variable, as far as I can tell.

The green meme, var. 2

Just for fun, I'm doing it again. I modified the date stamp so this would appear after var. 1.

Think of the plants (trees, flowers, etc) which grow within 50 yards of your home. Which is your favorite?

Runner up: Columbine. I love the flower.

Is any portion of this plant edible in any form? Can you boil the root, eat the berries, make tea from the leaves?

According to the internet (second source here) the flowers are good in salads. Huh. I didn't know that. They say you can chew the boiled roots, too, but it doesn't sound enjoyable.

Can you use any portion of this plant to make something that would be truly useful for you? Alternately, can you use any portion of this plant to make something just for fun, just one time?

One-time use: Make a chain for the kids from the stem.

Can this plant survive on the groundwater available to it, or does it need to be watered?

The particular plant I have in mind is in my yard and would probably die if I didn't water it. However, an orange columbine does grow wild along the Deschutes and Tumalo rivers, mostly on the hillsides, and all over the Camp Sherman area.

Do you see any other creatures -- birds or bees or squirrels -- using this plant?

I have never seen this happen, but mustn't bees and butterflies use it?

What does this plant look like right now, during this season and at the time of day you're writing?

It's January 17 around 3pm. You can't even tell it's there. In the fall I cut back the dried stems, so at the moment it's just a small pile of potential!

Ski season arriveth

Two mornings a week I bring my kids to daycare, so two mornings a week I drive a short ways along Century Drive. Before me: a vehicle with snowboards or skis strapped to the roof. Behind me: a rig packed with people in ski hats, goggles dangling from the rearview mirror.

Then I turn and they continue on to Mt. Bachelor.

*sigh*

Last Friday my husband took the morning off work to join me and Artist Sister-in-law on the mountain. "I am entirely too well to work," he said.

Friday morning snowboarding

Sunny today and so clear the sky is everywhere. On the mountain I felt like I was in it. Artist Sister-in-law and my husband and I sat in the middle of one of the northwest runs to admire Sparks Lake, frozen way down below, and across from us -- at arm's length -- South Sister and Broken Top.

My sister-in-law was giddy with happiness. "I'm just glad to be here!" she said. "I'm just so glad to be alive!"

But it was cold. Eeee ya! The wind howled at the top of the Outback chair, -20 degrees with the wind chill. The only way to stay warm was to get stuck in the deep, chalky powder in the trees, which I did a few times. Oh, yeah.

Hwy 372* closed

My water-loving brother-in-law says that one winter day many many years ago ODOT closed the road to Mt. Bachelor. I can't remember why. They closed the road after about 500 people had arrived in the parking lot. It was like the 500 had their own private mountain. The weather was fine, the snow was new. Fresh tracks for everyone!

*

This morning -- for only the second time in the family's memory -- ODOT again closed the road to Mt. Bachelor. My husband didn't believe it. He saw the note on both ODOT and Mt. Bachelor's web sites, but it hadn't been updated for two hours. We could see clouds to the west but at our house the sky was clear, the wind silent. So we did as we had planned, rushing through breakfast and gearing up and then dropping Sasha at her grandmother's house at exactly 7:50 and then heading up for Blake's first ski lesson...

...and were stymied by a huge digital sign just past the final Century Drive traffic circle: HWY CLOSED 5 MI AHEAD.

Hrm. Amazing. It's still closed.

Artist Sister-in-law lives in one of those new subdivisions along Century Dr., so we stopped by. It's really closed! Isn't it amazing? Why is it closed? What does the web site say?

Artist Sister's husband cooked breakfast while we exclaimed and watched the ODOT channel and hit "refresh" on Mt. Bachelor's web site. Artist Sister fielded calls on her phone, my husband on his cell phone. Is it still closed? You're in line at the roadblock? The line is how long? Well come by! So Artist Sister's husband made more coffee as various colleagues U-turned out of line and stopped by to give us updates, rumors. They said the wind blew so hard last night that the groomers had trouble grooming. They said the wind blew so hard it covered the roads as fast as the snowplows could plow. They said the sky was white, that in places along the road visibility was close to nothing.

Finally at 9:30 the web site said GET READY and some of our visitors dashed to their cars. We waited for them to report back. At 9:45 the web site said LIFTS ON STANDBY -- the three most insignificant lifts on the mountain. Just past 10am our friends reported that another lift seemed to have opened, but that the parking lot was not at all well-cleared, and we sat for awhile speculating on what a godawful mess it must be up there. Should we brave it? I don't know, I don't know...

*

No, no, we didn't take Blake up there. His class was cancelled. We went ice skating instead. And no, the ice skating did not stop him from whining about how much he would rather be skiing!

* Surprisingly fascinating article about Hwy 372 on Wikipedia.

Let me try again

Did nobody like my post about hiking up Broken Top?

I labored over that thing, I'm telling you -- labored. I wrote about a dozen different versions & then decided to focus only on the quiet part, when I played with my kids in that beautiful, alien place.

Wrong choice?

*

Blake hiked all the way to the snow by himself, did I mention that? Then he hiked one mile down by himself, and I carried him on my back the last mile. Forty lbs of wiggly boy on my back. A group of older women --in their 50s? 60s? -- charged past us, cooing with sympathy: "Aw, is the little guy tired?" I replied, "Is the boy tired?! The mama's tired!" But they had no sympathy for me.

By the time we returned to the trailhead, Blake and I and my mom lagged behind the others. I didn't know precisely how far behind we were, but we hadn't seen them since before Blake declared himself too tired to go further.

I wanted Blake to walk the last little way, so that he would finish the hike under his own power and also so that everyone would think, if only for a moment, that he had completed the four-mile journey on his own. On the other hand, I wanted to limp into the parking lot fully loaded so that everyone would cry, Jen! You're amazing!

In the event, Blake wanted to be carried until he saw our car -- and the family saw me carrying him -- and then he ran to them. (Yes, he ran, the little bugger.)

No one was particularly impressed by my, um, prowess. Because my husband carried Sasha the whole four miles, so he was a hero; and my dad carried the backpack that Blake displaced, so he was a hero, too. My mom has really bad knees, so even attempting the climb was heroic; and Artist Neice has run up and down Mt. Bachelor so many times that for her, a little hike to the glacier of Broken Top is blasé. I suppose it's a risk I took when I hiked up there with my kid -- that if he got tired, I'd have to carry him.

I would, however, like a small badge. A Girl Scout-type badge. You know?



Surfing Uncle, Blake and my husband with brave Sasha on his back scramble for a good view.

Stones, snow, sky

The ten of us stayed together, tramping happily through spare alpine meadows -- about two miles in distance and 1000 ft. up, up, up – until the second patch of snow. At that point Sasha determined that she could not ride in the backpack for another minute, and in truth I’d breached my tolerance, too. From the trailhead to the summit, the volcanic soil on Broken Top decreases in granularity; by the time we reached the second patch of snow we were traversing boulders as large as my daughter. Enough, I thought. It’s too dangerous for the children to hike any higher.

So my mother and I and the two children stayed to play in the snow while the other adults hiked further up the cirque. They wanted to see the stream which emerges from beneath the glacier. That stream eventually joins Tumalo Creek; water from Tumalo Creek comes out of the taps in my house.

Our patch of snow was not (according to the internet) a glacier; certainly "glacier" seems an overwrought term for the stuff my kids played on. It was just snow, wet and grainy, like the snow that stays in patches in the forest until late spring. We were hiking in the heat of Labor Day – but it was the same kind of snow. The kids slipped and slid on it like otters. Sasha threw some of it at her brother. Blake walked the edges, which are undercut by a runnel of water. I told him he’d get doused if he kept it up, but you know Blake: he stomped along the edge until he did in fact collapse it, soaking his socks and shoes.

The water from our melting snowpile ran around and under and through the rocks, so walking up there was more like criss-crossing a marsh than a stream – or maybe quicksand is a better analogy, because nothing grows in it. There are only rocks. The kids threw rocks into the water; they moved rocks aside to release a stream, then dammed it again; they stacked rocks into towers. My mom and I followed them anxiously, trying to corral the children in that wild place. Watch your aim – don’t hit your sister! Sasha, don’t hit your brother! Don’t climb that rock! Don’t walk so far up the snow! Blake, if you wet your shoes one more time…

Eventually we settled down. We sat with the hulk of the mountain at our backs, uncomfortable but comforting, and had a snack, some water. Stones and sky everywhere. The breeze hot on our skin. Crickets made a strange wapping sound; water whispered around and beneath us. A brief rockfall. Listen, kids! Just listen!

The other adults returned after awhile, appearing one by one over the ridge. My children shouted Daddy! Grandpa! Uncle! and scrambled to them – joyful as if it had been days since we’d seen them.

Then we started back down the mountain.



My parents: Dad in orange and Mom in blue.

Cross-posted at The Green House.

Tags: Nature+Parenting, Broken Top, Hiking

About that engaged couple

In my mtn. biking meme I wrote about a woman whose brakes went out on her bike and yet she finished the ride. On the bike. Two of my readers commented on the fact that her fiance wasn't more chivalrous.

Well. Why should the male half of the couple be required to ride the broken bike? You are assuming that he's a better rider. You are assuming that he can handle the pain & ignominy of the falls better. Wrong. She's the stronger rider.

Her husband was honoring her abilities. He didn't assume that she was beaten; he didn't assume that she was a poor helpless chick stranded on a trail. Instead, he gave her the impetus she needed to finish the ride under her own power, despite the odds.

If he'd sacrificially taken the broken bike, then he would have been the hero. Instead she was the hero.

*

My four-year-old son sometimes rides through the vacant hillside lot across the street. The big kids have built jumps on dirt trails over there. He pushes his bike up but he rides down. Sometimes he gets scared, seeing as there's rocks and juniper trees, and rather than feather his footbrakes he tries to drag his feet to slow down. This is extremely precarious. Stay on your bike, we always say. You're safer on your bike.

*

Do you remember that I said I'd cried, once, on a trail?

Three Corner Rock. Deepest darkest southern Washington, a trail covering a ridge or three through second-growth forest. We left one car at the bottom of the trail and parked the other near the summit, cutting the ride in half -- but it was still several miles over rough terrain.

I had broken my arm that winter. The doctor said that I couldn't hurt it, but it still hurt. I didn't have full range of mobility in my wrist yet. So: I was really afraid to fall. In mtn. biking, as in most sports, hesitation is not rewarded; fear of falling induces falling.

So I fell. On a set of about a dozen switchbacks leading through the forest on the side of a mountain, I fell. Over and over. My husband and brother-in-law were so far ahead I couldn't see them. I was so tired, I felt so abandoned, my wrist hurt and shit, I was still a couple miles from the car. I just plopped myself on the trail and cried. Poor me! Oh, poor me!

And then I got up. I was still a few miles from the car. How would I get there except under my own power? I ate a powerbar and I rode the rest of the way.

I'm proud of that ride. I get to be proud. Just like my sister is proud of finishing her run despite being lost in the rain. Just like Casey is proud of her birth experience. Just like you are proud of the hard thing you did most recently.

Mtn biking meme

We spent this weekend at my in-laws' place in Camp Sherman with some friends and their three-year-old son. It was relaxing. The boys picked mint for our mojitos.

But I don't want to write about that. I want to do a version of jo(e)'s meme which she got from the RevGalBlogPals. My kids are not school age yet, and it's been over a decade since I was in school myself; but I have been nostalgic, suddenly, for autumn mountain biking.


A woman asked me once if a person needs to learn to ride in order to live in Bend... I hope I don't sound like yet another poseur. I'm not saying I'm some superstar rider; I just like to spin.

First time I ever rode a mountain bike on a trail: In Lithuania, summer 1995. I borrowed my roommate's bike and rode along the Neris with the man who is now my husband. I skidded on a tree root and flipped over the handlebars, landing on my back on an embankment, one arm holding the tree and the other holding the bike. (The bike and I were fine.)
Last time: Autumn 2005. My husband rides some weekend mornings, waking early to do so, but I can't seem to get it together myself.
Smells that remind me of mtn biking: Hot dirt. Trail dust. Manzanita.
Things that remind me of mtn biking: The dozens of riders heading down my street toward Phil's Trail every day.
Scariest thing about mtn biking: Switchbacks with a cliff beyond. (I'm terrible at switchbacks.) Alternatively, being unable to unclip from my pedals when negotiating lava rocks. Ouch.
Things I don't like about mtn biking: When my husband and I used to ride together, he was always ahead. I never minded because I'd rather work through the hard parts without an audience; and he'd always wait for me at the end of the more exhilerating stretches. However, my lovely husband would also wait for me on the other side of bits that he knew would make me crash. And he'd be grinning.
Least favorite mtn biking clothes: Black lycra biking shorts.
Party tricks: At age 33 I learned to bunny-hop at last -- but I have yet to actually hop over a fallen tree, or any obstacle, on a trail.
Strangest thing: I fell in love with my husband while watching him ride. He's an elegant rider. Once in Lithuania he performed the most beautiful slow fall, tipping onto his front tire; and then, balanced on that one wheel, he unclipped and twisted over the handlebars, landing squarely on his feet. Also, once in Vilnius he bunny-hopped a dead cat.
Favorite ride: One might find this surprising, since on this trail I once flung my bike over a cliff, shouting with rage, and once I sat (on a switchback, matter of fact) and burst into tears; but my favorite ride is Three Corner Rock. The last time we drove out there logging equipment blocked the trail.
Best seasonal memory: Late summer on a trail east of Mt. Hood, where it's hot and dry but still densely forested: Dog River. My husband and his brother and me. We parked our car at the end of the trail and then rode toward its beginning, heading first up the highway -- a lonely state highway, not the freeway. From the highway we rode up a very steep, paved logging road, alongside which grew wild strawberries. My husband's brother threw his bike aside and crouched among the berries, looking exactly like a grizzled old bear.
Most inspirational memory: My husband and his brother and me, plus the engaged couple with whom my husband's brother lived: late summer on a trail that connects to and extends beyond Dog River: Surveyor's Ridge. This is a long, technical ride and at the moment I'm remembering, we started too late in the day. The female half of the engaged couple lost use of her brakes about half-way through the ride. She could only drag her feet to slow down, so of course she kept falling. At one point she landed in a heap and began to cry. Her fiance crouched beside her and said, quietly but sternly, "It's important to remain composed!" She got up and finished the ride. What choice did she have? (In fact she was a few weeks pregnant at the time. I have often thought that her fiance's advice is also good for new mothers.)

Weaving memories

So one day my dad appeared at my house and announced, “I’ve rented a houseboat at Lake Billy Chinook! Reserve the first week in August!” I could tell he was pleased. He remembered, I think, the houseboat we rented once on the St. Lawrence River.

I was twelve or so; we drove up from our home in northeast Pennsylvania and spent a week drifting from island to island. We criss-crossed the US/Canada border, which fascinated my sister Julie and I. (Julie kept saying Canada was colder. It’s Canada, she insisted. I scoffed.) Jill was still just a baby – five, I’d guess – but we included her as much as we could. In fact we three girls discovered and named a small island, Fafrika, begging my parents to moor there for an extra day of exploring. Some of our great family jokes originated on that trip. (“Black Beauty!” Ha ha! Stop, stop, I’ll fall out of my chair!) Oh, it was a fine time.

My family moved a lot as I was growing up. I never lived anywhere for more than five years. I don’t have a childhood home or friends I grew up with or a geography in which I feel rooted – but my parents have been married for 40 years and my sisters and I were always together, so we do have these shared memories. In the houseboat at Lake Billy Chinook I felt the texture of those memories. Layer over layer.

Twenty years ago my dad caught a fish off the edge of the houseboat and I ate it and was nearly sick, thinking of how the wriggly thing had been so recently alive; and then last weekend, my two brothers-in-law and my sister helped my son catch his first fish. (It was too small to eat.) Twenty years ago we played charades and all manner of games and we teased my mom relentlessly; and then last weekend we played a version of poker and teased my mom, who was just the tiniest, funniest bit drunk. Twenty years ago we were a family of five. Now we are ten – more, if you count our husbands' families -- and my parents are grandparents, and I’m a wife and a mom.

Now my husband: everything’s different for him. He is deeply rooted right here. He's fourth generation Oregonian on his father’s side, second generation Bendite on his mother’s side. He lived in Bend continuously until he left for college, and he has always considered Central Oregon to be the center of his universe. His memories show people changing over time, like mine – but they include changes in a place, too. It’s a richness I am only beginning to understand.

Before we left for the trip, he told me all kinds of stories about the LBC. Face shining in the telling. When he was a child, his parents kept a ski boat at Lake Billy Chinook. A lot of his friends’ parents had ski boats there, too. Someone had a little motorboat – not his parents, I don’t think – which he and his friends were allowed to pilot when they were just ten years old. He told me about waterskiing there, with family, with friends. He told me about the last time he ever waterskiied there: some asshole clearly out of control of his boat ran right over my husband’s line. He described the differences in the water and the terrain of the Metolius, Crooked River and Deschutes arms. He told me not to bring a towel because the sun is so powerful that a towel’s redundant; but definitely, he said, bring fleece. It’s always cold at night. He described the cast of the light down in that canyon and the feeling – a lightness, a particular kind of happiness, an exhausted euphoria – when driving up the canyon wall after a few days on the lake.

I have mentioned about a million times that I would like to give my children a strong sense of belonging and some historical continuity. In this culture we don’t have local gods or heroes, we don’t have legends from Long Ago. We can’t point to a pillar and say, That’s Lot’s wife. We can’t point to a crack in the earth and say, That is where humans emerged. We have only our own tales. We take the kids on a houseboat at Lake Billy Chinook and tell them stories about their father’s and uncle’s and aunts’ adventures there. We tell them stories about a houseboat rented on a different river, and their mother’s adventures there. This weaving tells the children who they are.

Fear, part three

One of the cutest things in the en-ti-re world is Sasha lying on her belly in the driveway talking to ants. If you ask what she's doing, she holds out her hand and says, "Ant - hand"; and often enough there is in fact an ant crawling on her hand. Or smooshed between her fingers.

Billions and billions of ants live in our yard. They like the ponderosa trees. Ours are all black ants, but biting red ants live in the park at the end of the street. I suspect red ants need the drier, dustier soil found there.

Anyway. You remember that my kids had a "pet" daddy long-leg in the bathroom, right? Well, the other day they found a spider outside and chased it around our neighbor's driveway. That spider was so large I could see it from 100 feet away. I don't know what kind it was but it sure scared me, and I told the kids to leave it alone.

That night, my husband and I explained that some spiders living in Central Oregon -- black widows for example -- are filled with poison, and if they bite you, they'll make you very, very sick. It was a one-way conversation, as conversations with Blake often are; but the next day I heard a loud STOMP, and Blake explained, "It's OK, Mom. That spider was filled with poison."

*

A cartoon in the last New Yorker showed two people in a tree with a bear below it, staring up hungrily. One person says to the other, "You tell him how much money we donated!" This made me laugh so hard...

I'm not trying to teach the kids to "love" nature. Nature isn't some cute, cuddly creature that exists out there; it's not a fascinating weather event watched on TV. Climbing a mountain isn't a quick jaunt undertaken lightly. This world demands admiration and respect.

Fear, part two

In daycare the kids are doing a unit on safety. They are learning about strangers.

Before we hiked Pilot Butte the other day, Blake told me a long story about how when you climb into the center of the earth and meet a stranger, you should never talk to them. Don't talk to strangers! So I asked him: Blake, what's a stranger? He had no idea.

While hiking Pilot Butte, we passed dozens of strangers. And we said hello or nodded to every last one of them. Some of the strangers stopped to admire Sasha and to wonder whether she had hiked the whole way by herself. One stranger yelled after me to catch her, that a car was coming down. (We hiked up the road, since we had the baby jogger. It's a one-lane paved road with no guard rail.) One stranger picked my son up when he tripped.

So. I can't teach my children not to talk to strangers when I talk to strangers all the time -- when, in fact, I sometimes rely on strangers for help. But clearly they need to learn to be wary of certain people.

Yesterday I left the kids in the car while I ran into the cleaners. (Silent conversation with self: I parked in the spot immediately in front of the building. I can see them through the shop windows. If someone tries to take them, I can yell loudly enough to be heard. I can be out the door in an instant. If Blake tries to climb out... Etc.) Before I left, I asked Blake if he knew what to do if a person he didn't know tried to open his door. What, Mom? Scream as loud as you can, Blake! Scream as loud as Sasha.

In other words, for the moment I have decided to tell them not to go with a person they don't know. Not to take anything, even candy, from a person they don't know.

What do you think? My kids are just 4 and 2.

Fear

After I graduated from college, aged 22 years, I moved to Riga, Latvia. An English-language newspaper (really more of a newsletter to emigres) had offered me a job. It paid next to nothing but did offer housing, so off I went. I bought a plane ticket and I left the country *snap* just like that.

In Latvia I met the most interesting people. Everyone seemed so daring. One young man had travelled from Latvia to Istanbul by plane, then came back up by train and bus; I met him in a cafe and made him tell me all his stories. At the end of the evening he offered me his hand-drawn map of Istanbul and encouraged me to take the same trip. So I did. With a backpack, a passport and very little knowledge of Turkey, off I went *snap* just like that.

You might say that I was careless. That I was naive, unforgivably innocent, much too trusting. And you'd be right ... but nothing particularly horrifying happened to me. I had a wonderful time. I grew up.

I kept that sense of daring after returning to the US. I learned to mountain bike; I learned to snowboard; I married; I finagled my way into jobs that I was completely unqualified for. I talked to strangers. I had a wonderful time.

Then. Then I got pregnant, and everything changed. I grew fearful. When I was pregnant, I wouldn't stand beside a microwave. I wouldn't consume anything containing alcohol, caffeine, unpasteurized milk (eg soft cheeses), beef, pork or raw fish. I stopped riding my bike and I certainly stopped snowboarding. I drove less. And I wanted never, ever to be more than 10 miles from a hospital.

After my baby was born I was always anxious. I think I was just a little crazy. I tried never to turn my back on my baby, even when he was sleeping. Babies die in cribs, you know! I used to put him in the bouncy seat in the bathroom and shower with the curtain part-way open, so I could see him. Once I dropped the phone on his head (from a distance of about six inches) and I kept him awake for hours to be sure he didn't have a concussion. Eventually -- after about six, eight months -- I realized that my excessive carefulness was actually creating problems, especially sleep problems, and I tried to relax.

But I'm still filled with anxiety. I think some of the other parents in my neighborhood consider me too laissez faire because I give my kids a long leash; but every second that I am responsible for those children, they weigh on me. It's an endless conversation I have with myself. Blake climbed up that ladder. He's probably OK. It's stable. He's only on the third rung. If he goes higher, I'll... Blake played with that marble toy; did he leave marbles where Sasha can get them? Maybe she won't eat them. Oh of course she will, I'd better find them all... If I go to the bathroom while Sasha's in her highchair, will she try to climb out? She's entranced by that movie. Maybe if I leave the door open, I can hear what she's doing... All day long I think these thoughts. If I can't see the kids, you can be damn sure I can hear them, and have a good idea what they're doing. Even if Blake has ridden his bike down to the park. Even if Sasha has wandered onto the neighbor's porch. I know where they are and I'm silently calculating whether (or how badly) they can get hurt in that activity, and whether it's worth the risk.

Andrea from Beanie Baby questioned why we, as parents, feel that the world is less safe than it used to be, when clearly it is not. She concluded (if I read correctly) that we feel more responsible for our children's safety than parents did in the past -- we feel that every bump and bruise is our fault -- and so while the world is safer, our culpability is greater, and that's the main source of our anxiety.

Certainly I feel that way. I take responsibility for what goes wrong with them, but don't take credit for what goes right.

And I was never, ever anxious or stressed before I had children. Not even during finals week. Not even when I arrived in Rila, Bulgaria at 10pm with no hotel reservations. Now I'm anxious just about every second of the day. I try to let my kids be free, to take their chances with the world; but I'm anxious for them.

2 hominids from the savannah

An old friend drove over from Portland today. In my previous incarnation, I was her manager; now she and I are colleagues; and I work part-time from Bend while she has every-other-Monday off. She drove over the pass early this morning so that we could snowboard together.

She has skied before but is just now learning to snowboard. Today was her second attempt: two runs down Sunrise in an hour, a leisurely break for lunch, and then a final slide down the hill before her muscles could fail her.

Learning to snowboard is a mysterious endeavor. One of the difficulties is language. How do I make a turn? she'd ask. Well, you swap edges. Rock from toe side to heel side. Ahh, she'd say. We talked about shifting her weight, squaring her shoulders, digging into the snow with her heels. Mm-hm, she'd say.

I learned to ride from one of my husband's friends, a snowboard racer. I used to look at him the way my friend looked at me today. "I understand all those words individually," I'd say, "but I don't know what you mean!" So I'd hold his phrases in mind: fall line, catch line, tree well, edges, swap edges, toe side, heel side. Then I'd slide down the mountain: whee! crash! In sliding I'd begin to feel with my b*dy something that seemed like it might match his phrases, and then in a flash I'd understand. Oh! Swap edges! Why didn't you say so?

My friend did not learn to associate any of the odd snowboarding lingo to what she felt today. Next time, I think.

But once we sat resting in the snow -- we two hominids from the savannah plunked in the snow, in the sky. Pine forest spread out beneath us, on and on, as far as we could see... I pointed out Broken Top and told her stories of some adventures we've had there. My husband proposed on that ridge there; Blake hiked to that glacier all by himself; Sasha's been there, too, in my front pack. After awhile we started down again, and she said that I should go on ahead. "I don't want to keep you," she said. "Go have fun." But I said oh, it's ok; I just love to be up here.

I understand, she said.

It's all good, dude.

Strangers on TV

Years ago I lived with a family in Moscow. They weren’t relatives or family friends; we didn’t know them; they were just a small, Russian family who had volunteered to host a student through my college exchange program. The "host parents" were only a decade older than me – the age I am now, in fact – but lived such different lives, with such gritty responsibility, that I found them unfathomable. Also, I spoke Russian poorly. Andrey and Galya’s four-year-old daughter would rage at me. Why can't you speak? Why can't you understand? Once I tried to read her a story but she threw the book down in disgust; I could not differentiate the pronunciation of the words "mouse" and "bear," which rendered the story meaningless.

I lived with them for 3 ½ months. In the early weeks we tried to communicate – Andrey would drink vodka and lecture on the history of the Russian Empire. Then I had a bout of homesickness during which I refused to speak Russian and derided everything Soviet. I came around again for the last two weeks or so.

One evening at the beginning of my stay, as we sat in their small apartment kitchen finishing dinner, Andrey and Galya explained that a great American movie would be showing on TV. They seemed eager for me to see it. The movie, they said, was called "Choo-zhoi." It had a sequel, "Choo-zhee-ah." Did I know it?

Well, I didn’t know those words, so I couldn’t be sure if I’d seen it; I excused myself to find my dictionary. Choo-zhoi :: Stranger. No, sorry, I said. I don’t know a great American movie called Stranger.

They found that hilarious. Oh, you’ll love it! they said. With a lot of hand gestures and animated expressions, they told me the plot. I struggled to understand. A few people in a – what? An airplane? It crashes. Round eyes, yells: something scary happens, I couldn’t tell what. Then Andrey leaned back, almost lying in his chair, shouted, "Aaargh!" and shot his fist up out of his belly.

Alien!

Since that evening I never have been able to hear the word "stranger" without also hearing Andrey’s shout and feeling the extra connotations in the word "alien." I had thought of strangers simply as people I didn’t know – other drivers on the road, other shoppers in the store – but now they are also aliens: unknowable, unpredictable, bizarre.

*

You thought I was going somewhere else with that, didn't you?

In a ski hut in the darkness

The night before Christmas Eve -- last Friday -- some friends hosted a party at the Swampy Lakes ski hut. The hut is a small, three-sided log cabin with a dirt floor. Daylight sparkles through the logs, but with a tarp forming the fourth wall and a roaring fire in the stove (stove? it was a barrel on its side; this was a new experience for me; I haven't the vocabulary), we could duck inside for cozy warmth.

Our friends carried a card table and piles of food the few hundred yards from the parking lot to the hut; we ate fantastically. And drank. Stood around in the snow, laughing. Beers in hand, some of the dads built a luge run which banked around skinny lodgepole pines. Blake and a few other kids flew down the slope while the moms worried loudly. (That's too fast! They'll hit the trees! Watch his head! I'm not so sure about this!) My husband was feeling sick and stayed home, leaving me to play the agressive male role, but as the run got slicker and faster I finally pulled Blake out of it. He's so fearless he scares me.

Darkness fell around 4:30 and although someone hung a lantern, I grew uneasy. Beyond the window lurks the night.* Our little hut was an outpost of light and laughter 16 miles from home -- 16 dark and icy miles, with only trees between here and there -- and I began to worry about my husband and small daughter. So we waved goodbye to our friends, exactly as if we were leaving their house, and tramped through knee-deep snow to our car. Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas to all!

Inspiring to see all those other parents wrangling their wee children in the snow and cold. It was one of my favorite experiences of the year.

*I remember reading a poem with that line in high school. Gather around, friends! For on the window lurks the night. Something like that. Anyone recognize it?

Query

If you spend an entire day vaccuming, washing floors, cleaning bathrooms, washing clothes and making beds, and while you are busy the children entertain themselves by emptying every toy box in the house -- here's the question: At the end of the day, can you consider your house clean?

*

"At first she was suspicious of the washing machine ... But little by little the machine seemed to her more carina, for it was after all only a machine, and it filled itself and emptied itself and turned around and around, and it seemed so marvelous to her that a machine could remember so much and was always there, ready and waiting to do its work. And then there was the machine for washing the dishes, and you could wash the dishes in a costume for the evening without getting a drop of water on your gloves. When the signora was away and the boys were at school, first she would put some dirty clothes in the washing machine and start that, and then she would put some dirty dishes in the other machine and start that, and then she would put a nice saltimbocca alla romana in the electric frying pan and start that, and then she would sit in the salone in front of the TV and listen to all the machines around her doing the work, and it delighted her and made her feel powerful. Then there ws the frigidario in the kitchen, making ice and keeping the butter as hard as stone, and there was the deep freeze full of lamb and beef as fresh as the day when they had been killed, and there was an electric egg beater, and a machine for squeezing the oranges, and a machine for breathing in the dust, and she would have them all going at once...."

Clementina, from The Stories of John Cheever

This is where I live

In Central Oregon, one notices the smells in the air. I mean, everyone notices the smells, even someone like myself, who never notices anything. Ponderosa pines. Hot dirt. Wet earth. Rotting pine needles. Snow. The air smells clean, or maybe I mean pure; smells borne on the wind are unsullied.

*

I live in a hollow with pine trees taller than my house: ponderosas mostly, but also juniper. My neighbors have planted a few people-sized trees in their yards as well – aspen, larch, slow-growing alpine pines – but the ponderosas dominate. Ponderosas are beautiful trees. Their branches start up high, much higher than a man’s head, and their long needles grow in clumps at the end of each branch: so ponderosas don’t make a man feel crowded or trapped. They grow straight, straight, straight. They make good lumber, which is why all the trees in my neighborhood, though exceedingly tall, must be less than 60 years old.

The street I live on runs the length of the hollow and dead-ends at an unimproved park. I imagine that once upon a time, a stream ran there instead. It would have flowed from the park back through the hollow, banked sharply to the east, and then emptied into the Deschutes River. I often flow that way myself, emptying not into the river but in the children's park beside it.

"X" Street, a wide swath of asphalt, cuts down into the hollow right beside my house and intersects with the road-that-was-a-stream. This street creates a break in the trees, a sun break. In the winter I hang out in the yard on this side of my house, but in the summer I hide from it. In Central Oregon there is often a ten degree (or more) difference between sun and shade, and in the summer, two degrees of sunblock.

Because of the shading trees, my house stays cool, even in summer. In the mornings from June to September I open all my windows and doors to let in the warm breeze. It lets the neighbors in, too. I can hear the conversations of all the people walking toward the park; I hear the mountain bikers call to one another as they ride toward the trails in the Deschutes National Forest. My children listen for the dogs and other kids.

While I am surrounded by trees, I don’t live in a forest. This area was logged a generation ago, and then (because it was the edge of town for a long time) it was a dumping ground; in the last decade it has seen nearly constant housing construction. It is what they call disturbed land. The trees have grown back, and the hardiest understory plants grew back – prickly shrubs like currant and rabbitbrush and bitterbrush – and some small flowers and one or two invasive species. And, of course, we have planted grass and friendlier, thirstier flowers and shrubs.

Chipmunks and ground squirrels like ponderosas but they won't live with people -- or maybe we won't live with them? not liking burrows in our grass -- so instead we have aggressive gray squirrels. They drop pine cone discards all year long: plunk onto the grass, thunk onto the deck, and duck! They fight with the stellar jays. Quail run here, a few bunnies. The deer graze on by. Each fall I plant a few tulips just for them. Also I hear rumors of coyotes. Two years ago my son and I glimpsed one in the park; a year ago my neighbor saw one chase down a rabbit. And every few months, someone loses a cat.

*

John Daniel tells the Native American story of Payatmu, who hailed the sun rise every day. When he stopped celebrating it, the sun stopped rising.

"The point is not that we should learn the Sioux language and perform the Sun Dance, or that we should plant corn in dry places and sing it up with Zuni song rituals. We can't simply borrow another culture's religious sensibility, evolved through ages, as we borrow a coat. Nor is it crucial to believe that certain words and actions cause the sun to come up. But it is very crucial to understand the sensibility from which such words and actions flow, to understand that the continuance of life depends on the thoughts, words and acts of each of us."

Remembering the Sacred Family, an essay within The Trail Home.

Autumn in Central Oregon

Well, that's it for my tomatoes. They froze last night.

It's autumn in Central Oregon. My mother, who grew up in Massachusetts, derides it. She says you can't tell the difference between the seasons out here.

True, we don't have a glorious display of color like you east coasters. If you want to really see the leaves change, you have to go out of your way -- you have to drive to Shevlin Park, or over one of the mountain passes. No, to sense autumn in Central Oregon, you have to pay closer attention.

The smell is different. The quality of the sunlight changes. It's still hot in the sun, but the shadows are longer and much cooler and, of course, the days are shorter. (When my husband takes the kids outside after work, he has to bring a backpack full of warm things that he piles onto them as they walk along. By the time they come back inside, their hands are freezing.)

The squirrels turn manic in the fall. The ponderosa in the middle of our back deck grows monumental pinecones which the squirrels decimate; they pull the nuts out, dropping each "leaf" of the pinecone onto the deck, and then they pitch the rest. Ka-thump. The sound on the roof is quite scary, and if you're on the deck when one of them falls -- well, God help you. The squirrels also grow braver and one will stand on the deck, sorting through the debris, while Sasha chatters at him from the other side of the screen door. One of her few multi-word sentences is, "Where'd the squirrel go?" asked with her palms upraised and her little eyes searching the tree limbs for a sign.

The Canadian geese have been practicing their formations and calling their particular autumn call; I haven't heard the doves in awhile (have I?); and there's a bird, which I do not think is a woodpecker but which does bang its head on the trees, that is making a new and very pretty sound.

And, of course, the neighborhood is silent during the day because the children are in school.

I love this time of year.

Blogging Mt. Washington

After the first long slog through the trees, we reached the treeline and stopped to snack.


Brother-in-law heading toward the spine before the spire.


My nephew on the first pitch up the spire. This was the only place we roped up ascending; we rappelled down. See the tiny people down below? The orange hat is me, nervously waiting my turn.


That's the loo-oo-ong scree field we "surfed" down. And the gloriously flat alpine meadow which (eventually) took us back to our cars.

Thanks to Steve for the pictures. And the belay. And for helping fit my harness. And for carrying a large part of the gear. And...

Here is my first description of the climb.

Rethinking the climb

Q: You weren't clear. Did you enjoy the climb?

A: Yes, I did. There's nothing like standing up in the air like that, particularly in the Cascades, where the peaks are far apart. It must be better than flying, which I imagine to be noisy.

Q: Did you enjoy it enough to do it again?

A: I would only climb Mt. Washington again if:

• if I got substantially more experience with climbing gear;
• if I had under my belt at least two rock faces not at the summit of a mountain;
  
• and if I was accompanied by at least two climbers more experienced than me.

Only my ignorance got me to the top this time!

Q: How about a mountain with less exposure?

A. If my husband is feeling well enough, we'll climb Broken Top in the next few weeks. He proposed to me there one Labor Day and we try to climb it around then every year.

Q: Does it change your outlook to put yourself in mortal danger like that?

A: Absolutely. Let me tell you this. When I got back home around 8pm Saturday night, Blake was so happy to see me that he nearly burst from his high chair. So I greeted him and my husband with tremendous hugs, gave my husband the five-minute lowdown on the trip, and then -- before having dinner myself, before changing my dusty clothes, before taking care of myself in any way -- I helped my son wash his hands & face and took him to the potty.

On an ordinary day I might have resented having to care for my child in this selfless way, when I was so completely exhausted myself. Not Saturday night. That night I felt that taking care of my child was a special treat -- that taking care of him is what makes me his mother -- that three years of such minutiae has informed our bond. Our relationship was built on the way we interact during parenting moments like diaper changes, trips to the mailbox, or washing hands.

Above the ponderosas

We did it. We summitted Mt. Washington. It's the most scared I have ever been in my life.

First I have to say that I climbed with the best group of men in the world. Fun, funny, and just happy to be up there -- not in a race to summit. I would never have made it anywhere near the top without their help. They were incredibly patient and generous with my dad and me, who know next to nothing about harnesses, ropes and carabiners. Also, they carried the climbing gear. Thanks, guys.

Thanks also to my wonderful husband and mother-in-law, who watched the children so that I could climb.

So we drove to Hoodoo and then turned onto a dirt road, where we found the Pacific Crest Trail. We walked along it for about an hour. It's a nice hike through an alpine forest, feet shusshing in volcanic ash. Lots of beargrass and lupine in the understory; also huckleberries and wild strawberries, which, on the way back down, Jason and I stopped to eat. (Just for fun. A dozen huckleberries wouldn't feed a mouse.)

After an hour we turned onto the trail which climbs up the mountain. It was immediately steeper and less travelled than the PCT. We stepped over blown-down tree trunks, and the soft limbs of little pine trees swiped at my face -- lodgepole pine, mountain hemlock and whitebark pine, I think Steve said. It started out steep and then got even steeper, so that I huffed and turned red and we mostly stopped talking.

And then, abruptly: Boom. The top of Mt. Washington in our faces. We stood on bare lava rock with some pumice pebbles and stunted trees and bushes. Bees, ants. My brother-in-law showed us where the glacier had cut away at the side of the mountain -- a thousand feet below us, down that slope with the boulders at the base -- and one of the guys asked when that had been. Then they all riffed on how the glacier had been there up until the Reagan administration, when it rapidly began receding; revived a bit during Clinton's years; then disappeared altogether with the election of Bush Number Two. Everyone laughed but my dad, the sole Republican among us.

Above the treeline it was an exhilarating feet-and-hands scramble over fairly loose rock to gain the spire. We were not likely to fall, but if we did, we'd have bumped and slid down a scree slope, abraded head to toe, for several hundred feet.

So then we stood on a narrow ridge and the experienced climbers planned our route. One at a time we roped up to climb about 50 feet, with Terry holding back until last to be sure we all had our gear right and -- in my case, at least -- weren't paralyzed with fear. I have been to the climbing gym a few times, enough to know that this route had excellent hand-holds and lots of them, but I was terrified. I felt that I was in the sky, anchored to earth just barely by my hands and the tips of my shoes. Clutching abrasive volcanic rock.

Above that point we slowly picked our way to the top: foothold, handhold, foothold, handhold. It was not so steep that we needed a rope but we were definitely climbing. Up in the sky. When were finally reached the summit the others were joyous, practically leaping, but I held onto the rock for dear life. I wondered how the hell I'd get down. I watched the bees and butterflies which swooped around us, a flock of starlings, a golden eagle.

So much smoke on the horizon it looked like sunset. Wildfires are burning across the northwest.

From one side of our perch we could see nearly the full extent of the fire that burned two years ago from Suttle Lake to Mt. Jefferson, plus all the beetle-killed trees interspersed in what remains. From the other side we could see the lava flow from Belknap Crater. 1500 years old and there's still nothing growing in it but lichen. It's an interesting juxtaposition.

Anyway, we got off the spire by downclimbing and roping up for one belay and a rappel. The rappel was an act of faith. I was so scared I put it immediately out of my mind, so sorry, I can't describe it. I'll post the pictures when I get them.

Rather than hiking back down that steep trail we decided to surf the scree field. It was a several hundred foot slope of volcanic ash and beautiful pumice stones (pink, green and purple; they made me think of big, sharp Fruity Pebbles). Each step set off a small avalanche of pumice stones; if I balanced right I'd slide with it. Step and slide, step and slide.

At the base of the scree field is an alpine meadow, pictures of which convinced me to attempt this climb in the first place. Yellow flowers everywhere. I was still unsteady and wanted to walk holding onto rocks, but this was a (comparatively) flat dirt trail. Two or three hours later we reached our cars.

Ten miles round trip. My whole body felt sleepy and I needed to oil my knees. I did not feel safe again until I stepped into my house.

Here's a nice picture. (The men took lots of photos but I haven't seen any yet.) No snow when we climbed, of course.