Off the off the beaten track

"Mom, I can't get over this barbed wire!" Blake called.

I gave my water bottle to Sasha, told her to stand still, and walked back through the cheatgrass to where Blake stood, stuck between bitterbrush, lava rock and, apparently, barbed wire. Sasha and I, following a deer trail through the brush, hadn't crossed any barbed wire; but Blake, he doesn't walk where others walk. I lifted him over the wire and sternly reminded him what it means to follow someone.

My husband had pulled some strings to get my car's oil changed today (don't ask), but we didn't know how long it would take the mechanics to get to it; we didn't know if we three would be sitting on their sidewalk for half an hour or four hours. "Walk to Sawyer Park," my husband suggested. "It's only a mile." I considered it.

The service garage is in a light industrial area of windowless buildings with lots full of RVs and boats and trucks. Security gates enclose everything. Parkway traffic roars by. No one walks around there. That's what I thought at first, anyway. Then I stood with one hand on my hip and another shading my eyes, and I squinted, and considered, and I saw there is, in fact, an interesting way to walk. We could take a jagged line through abandoned lands of hardy, prickly Central Oregon shrubs and invasive weeds. Lizards live in that liminal place. Grasshoppers, too. Grasshoppers clack-clacked, leaping, as we pushed by.

We had water and gorp but it was so hot and prickly that I knew after just 1/4 mile that the kids would never make it to the park. I thought we might find a closer path to the river, though. It was really hot. The kids kept collapsing in bits of shade. When we crossed from that industrial space to a residential street, I hoped for a sprinkler — vainly; even the temporary owners of foreclosed properties know not to run their sprinklers at 3pm.

"Look," I said, pointing to a lot that was once, I suspect, a working ranch. Mature ponderosas grew there. "The river's on the other side of that land. You can make it!" I urged them on.

But at that old ranch we found something better than the Deschutes, at least as far as young, drownable children are concerned: a busted irrigation pipe. Water just poured from that pipe. It made a creek along the side of the road. My kids shouted and leapt. Blake, he climbed a split-rail fence and jumped into the creek's deepest part. With knees bent he was in water up to his neck. Sasha found a snake skin, a drowned lizard and tadpoles. I kid you not: tadpoles. That pipe must've been broken a long time.

Thus refreshed, we walked back to the service garage.


This is the Central Oregon version of Sweet Juniper's experiences in Detroit. You could say I'm making a meme of his post about pathways of desire.

White Noise

Our first day on Orcas Island dawned cold and rainy — not fat, Central Oregon droplets with sunlight visible between them but fine, misty stuff, like the inside of a cloud. There was nothing to do in that rain but sleep.

Toward afternoon the sky raised and then the sun broke though. Which made a nap even nicer.

Artist Brother-in-law on the beach.

Na, na — I cannae, I cannae

Awhile back a book meme went around that asked something like, "Which literary character would you like to marry?" Most of the bloggers I read answered, "Mr. Darcy, of course!"

Really? Darcy? I hadn't read Pride and Prejudice but I'd seen two movie versions (the one with Colin Firth and the one with Keira Knightley) and I didn't particularly like Mr. Darcy in either. He's so arrogant! He's silent. He doesn't do anything. He just travels from party to party being arrogant and silent.

Recently I heard Mr. Darcy praised again, so I thought, well, I'd better read the book. If so many people like him, clearly I'm missing something. He must have more depth than what's shown in the movie. (I planned to read the book in the San Juans but OMG! I loved it! I stayed up late to read it. I finished it before we ever reached the ferry.) And lo, I did like Mr. Darcy. I see that while he's arrogant, he is also an honorable man. He does a lot more than go to parties, too, in the book; he's got an estate to run, he has tenants and vast acreage to care for. I respect that.

I don't want to marry him, though. Do you? He has no sense of humor! He's silent!

I'll tell you which literary character I like. I wouldn't marry him, but I have a wee bit of a crush on him.

Alan Breck.

From Kidnapped? The Robert Louis Stevenson novel?

Wait, wait, I'm completely serious here. I borrowed Kidnapped from the library thinking I'd read it to the kids in the San Juans; after skimming just the first chapter I knew they'd never understand it; but after skimming just the first chapter I was totally hooked. While on vacation I kept stealing away to read parts of it, and it fair haunted me, I tell ye.

Alan Breck! What a hero! He's a great swordsman and he's brash and he's a dandy and he always carries with him the buttons off his dead father's coat. He's generous and open-hearted and would travel to the ends of the earth (or across the heather, pursued by English soldiers) for a friend. He has an impeccable sense of honor. He's a little guy but he has great reserves of strength, sleeping on rocks, traversing mountains without a whimper. But he's emotional. He sings all the time. He cries. And that scene in the heather? When he and David Balfour have been travelling in such hardship for such a long time, and young David draws his sword on him? What a lovers' quarrel! That's when I most liked Alan Breck.

Alan stood quite still, the tails of his great-coat clapping behind him in the wind.

"This is a pity" he said at last. "There are things said that cannot be passed over."

"I never asked you to," said I. "I am as ready as yourself."

"Ready?" said he.

"Ready," I repeated. "I am no blower and boaster like some that I could name. Come on!" And drawing my sword, I fell on guard as Alan himself had taught me.

"David!" he cried. "Are ye daft? I cannae draw upon ye, David. It's fair murder."

"That was your look-out when you insulted me," said I.

"It's the truth!" cried Alan, and he stood for a moment, wringing his mouth in his hand like a man in sore perplexity. "It's the bare truth," he said, and drew his sword. But before I could touch his blade with mine, he had thrown it from him and fallen to the ground. "Na, na," he kept saying, "na, na — I cannae, I cannae."

I wouldn't marry Alan Breck, though, like I said. It's only a matter of time before one government or another lops off his head.

*

David and Alan eat oatmeal. All through the book — when David first meets his uncle; as they beg a night's lodging from strangers; as they flee through the mountains — they eat oatmeal. Apparently Scottish oatmeal is stone-ground, not rolled. I thought that was interesting. I was trying to imagine eating oatmeal with water three meals a day every day for weeks on end.

When you're a mother concerned with running a household as inexpensively (but not cheaply) as possible, you notice different things in a book than you did at age 12.

Distractions

By the kitchen sink I keep what my husband calls a "bletch bucket." It's for compostable food scraps. In the winter our bletch bucket might sit by the sink for days, collecting only banana peels. Once the CSA starts up and the weather warms, however, it fills and smells and attracts fruit flies, so I empty it once a day.

The compost bins sit in the far corner of the backyard. To reach them I pass the raised bed and the flower bed. This can take half an hour. Cheat grass keeps growing amongst the flowers, you see, so I have to pull that, and then I have to check on the blueberries and why, pray tell, did the hundred flowers on that bush form only a dozen berries? I let Sasha plant the radishes too closely together; in case you're tempted to do this let me dissaude you; the radish greens will grow well but you won't get a single radish bulb. Which is fine for feeding guinea pigs but not people. So as I pass I pull radish greens for our dear Apocolypse Pets, and pick a pea or two for me, and then I fail to suppress my astonishment at the sunflowers. Did I tell you about the sunflowers? Last year two or three grew in dry dust back there, back where I put the compost bins, and lo, they have multiplied. It's a sunflower forest. They are just about to bloom. Wasps like them. I find wasps absolutely creepy but bees are interesting. Honeybees visit the flowerbed. On my way back to the house I squat to watch them.

Then one of the children calls me or I remember the pasta water is boiling or whatever, you know, I remember whatever task I had started before deciding to empty the bletch bucket, and I hurry back inside.

*

By the way: One of the three bins is completely filled with dirt. I made dirt in just six months. In the desert! That's what they call continuous learning.

Guinea Pigs: The Apocalypse Pet

Our two guinea pigs like to eat lettuces, all parts of a carrot, young radish leaves, apple peels, crabapples, watermelon peels (just the green part, not the rind), clover, all parts of a dandelion, the leaves of lamb's quarters and green grass.

In other words, my guinea pigs eat weeds.

*

We moved into this new house just as the economy of Bend (A.K.A. the Bend housing market) entered free-fall. I was afraid we'd made a horrible mistake. I was afraid the market would fall so far we'd be upside-down on our new mortgage.

I rationalized our purchase by insisting that this is an Apocalypse House. It has two fireplaces, so theoretically we don't need heat. It has room for a clothesline and room for a garden and we could, if push came to shove, bunk the kids in the master bedroom & rent out their rooms. And we have the guinea pigs, which subsist on weeds, and which are themselves edible.

Crazy, eh? It did feel, for awhile, like everything was crashing around us. It doesn't seem quite so desperate anymore. Even though I'm on furlough this week.

Adventure/Misadventure

I found myself with a bit of free time today, so I went for what my brother-in-law calls a "town ride" on my mountain bike. I took the Sawyer Uplands trail, which is just a mile and a half from my house; it's near my favorite park and I've been curious about it for awhile.

And?

Holy crap.

The Sawyer Uplands trail practically stopped my heart — steep, rock-strewn single-track with a cliff on the right, so that I instinctively hugged to the left, and then clipped my pedal against lava rock and dirt. It's the kind of single-track that has to be ridden because it's too narrow to walk one's bike. It's the kind of single-track I haven't ridden in seven years.

Of course I fell. I lost my balance on an uphill switchback and fell backward, unclipping just in time to avoid crashing on a rock, and twisted my ankle so bad I felt sick. I sat for awhile to calm myself. You're ok, for goodness sake, you're ok... Ground squirrels skittered between rocks and I saw butterflies and birds. A lawnmower purred. Ho hum. I got back up. I kept riding because, by God, I'm not 40 yet.

And lo: the Sawyer Uplands trail dead-ends in someone's driveway. The trail is, like, 3/4 mile long.

So I rode back down and hopped on the "Awbrey Reach" section of the Deschutes River Trail, which is basically a dirt road. It wasn't very exciting but the views were incredible and I saw a three-point buck resting under a juniper tree.

I love living here.

Wednesday Wondering

Alternate careers I think I would have liked, in no particular order.

Botanist. I am curious to know if a serviceberry could be crossed with a blueberry. Could you get a larger, sweeter berry that's drought- and frost-resistant?

Mediator. As a parent I resolve disputes all day long and I find it interesting. (Ask me again at bedtime, though. I might have a different answer.) In my last job I had a lot of responsibility but no authority, which means I had to make people want to do what I wanted them to do; that's a lot like parenting, actually, and I think like arbitrating professionally.

Technical writer or writer of science texts for children. I dislike dinosaurs, to speak honestly, but I do appreciate the art of creating dinosaur texts for small children. It's a puzzle. How do you explain extinction to a four-year-old? How do you explain the dinosaurs' extraordinary size?*

Arborist. Last fall an arborist trimmed our 120-foot-tall ponderosa and then lopped the top 20 feet off a trio of dead birches. He was like an acrobat, like a dancer, up in those trees. He sang the whole while. I think I'd enjoy that, too.

Bookstore owner. Doesn't everybody want to own a bookstore? I'd like to own one of those silent, dusty stores along Burnside in Portland, across from Powell's, the ones that sell old books about the Pacific Northwest and have so few customers that the place barely turns a profit, but the owner is happy anyway because she gets to spend the entire day reading.


Career choices which would be a colossal mistake:

Anything requiring decision-making; anything requiring attention to detail; and anything requiring the wearing of high heels.

What about you?



*Not all dinosaurs were gigantic. Some were the size of a chicken. (For the record.)

Open the doors and see all the ...

We spent the day raking and mowing and planting and all that springtime stuff, except it wasn't springtime: it was hothothot, August hot.

So we shut up the house, like they say to do on those "how to save energy in the summer" lists, then opened it up again in the evening. There was a breeze so I even opened the door to the back yard ... and now we have a mouse in the house. A little gray mouse.

Eeek!

Garden notes from all over

I built a raised garden bed. I did! This house's previous owners left some unfinished wood siding in the back yard, which I sawed into appropriate lengths and connected with nails and wood screws. It's 4' x 4' x 2'.



You aren't impressed. You should be. I haven't made anything from wood since 7th grade shop class. And I did this all by myself, with no help from anyone.

Ta da!

*

But. I killed the thyme. I'm not quite sure what happened. It was growing well on my windowsill; it had bright green new leaves; and then in the span of a day it wilted and died. Testy little thing.

But! Four tomato seeds have sprouted! We'll see if I can keep those suckers alive.

*

You heard that the Obamas have authorized a vegetable garden at the White House, right? It's not in sight of the White House, but it's big. They're planning to grow a lot of spinach.

The White House also now has a First Beekeeper.

It's a real sign of something or other, I tell you.

What he said

I am absolutely loving the Spring 2009 issue of Oregon Humanities. This is John Daniel describing Oregon's dry side:

"Spare were the junipers, homely and stalwart, in loose array on the slow rise ... each tree casting its own distinct shadow as the passing clouds cast theirs. There was something civilized and welcoming in the way trees and creatures and human beings as well apportioned themselves in the land. The country presented itself in particulars – this juniper, this lichened rock, this golden eagle riding the thermals, this series of ecstatic, wailing coyote cries in the deep of the night – and this way that solitary things and happenings invited my attention seemed to show me traces at least of my own singularity, a sense of what I was and could be or could at least hope to be."

Essay "In Favor of Rootedness."

Like a record, baby

I'm always imagining the past. Sometimes I think about the recent past -- that is, my past -- but mostly I think about times Long Ago.

It started after the birth of my first child. I'd sit in my rocking chair nursing him, alone in the dark night. Rock, rock. It was a pleasant but lonely moment; so I was always imagining other women in other times who had nursed their children, too.

I most liked to imagine the flood of the Black Sea 7000 years ago, which I'd seen on TV. I'd conjure a young woman -- much younger than me but, given the times, probably entering the second trimester of her life, just like me -- sitting alone on a rock nursing her child and watching the sea rise. She would be full of awe and fear. She would wonder what kind of world her child would live to see. Would the waters recede again? Or would she and her child have to forge a new life? My son was born three months after the Twin Trade Towers fell, so you can see why this story appealed to me.

I don't have those silent nursing sessions anymore, but I still imagine other women's lives. Yesterday morning I woke and walked downstairs to the kitchen, which we had picked up (all leftovers put into the 'fridge) but not cleaned. Within a second's span I had thought of the family that housed me in Moscow 17 years ago and the way that woman cleaned up every single crumb, all day long, to deter cockroaches, and how lucky I am that cockroaches don't live in Bend; and then I felt grateful for the dishwasher, which had so quietly and uncomplainingly cleaned my dishes while I slept, and I thought about my mother's mother and all those other generations of women who did not have dishwashers to help them.

At other moments I'll wonder how women cooked over an open fire. I'll think about how, without a stereo in their living rooms, women must have sang a lot. I'll think about how extended families of women used to work together (this while I wish for someone to show me how to make jam), and I wonder whether they liked that or didn't. I'll think about how American settlers had no other women to talk to for weeks on end. I also think about the Paiutes (who lived here, in Central Oregon) using obsidian knives and digging sticks.

It's not an obsession. It's a passing fancy -- a second's worth of thought -- not even a daydream. It certainly affects my response to current events, though. And my opinion of my life.

*

This is Seth Cotlar writing about nostalgia in the spring issue of Oregon Humanities: "Over time we became more accustomed to the uncertainty and turbulence that accompanies the incessant newness of modern life. We have, to varying degrees, come to accept the inevitable fact that what lies ahead of us will differ dramatically from what came before. ...We moderns know that the unique material and human context that formed us, that made us who we are, will before long cease to exist in any recognizable form. ...The passage of time in modern societies has an annoying tendency to sever whatever connections we might form to the objects and people that are meaningful to us."

Which makes me wonder if the way that I see the past everywhere is nostalgia: a search for continuity in a changing landscape. And its discovery.

*

Time seems to me not linear but spiral-shaped. Everything comes back around -- not back to where it started, not full circle, but nearby, so that you can sense it.

Sprung

Sunday I heard the red-wing blackbird singing. It was late afternoon; the kids and I were walking down the hill to my in-laws' place; and as we neared the river, I heard the red-wing blackbird singing.

It's spring!

We have also been having squalls instead of storms: 15 minutes of swirling snow, then sunshine, then more snow. Yesterday it was snowing and sunny at the same time.

Spring!

I'm so excited for spring I can hardly stand it. Can I start my garden? Can I? Can I, please? No?

I bought a tiny thyme plant for my windowsill.

Kompot recipe

One fine autumn day when I was in -- Riga? Vilnius? -- I walked through my Soviet-era apartment building discreetly peering into other people's apartments. Ordinarily people kept the doors to their apartments closed and I never, ever saw them. On this hot day, however, several doors were open -- because inside, people were making kompot.

I haven't seen anything like that kompot in America. It isn't a dessert. It's juice. It's a thick, syrupy juice made in the fall from fresh fruits. Throughout the winter and spring people pour a small amount of kompot into a cup, mix it with water, and drink it.

I liked it very much, so Witty Russian Guy sent me the recipe. He said I could share it with y'all.

Kompot

1. You need 2 three-litre glass jars, (attention!!!!) 2 special lids and special Sealing Machine for "sealing the lid of a glass jar." Sure, you can try another method of conservation but I give no guarantee in this case... :-(

2. You need 1 kg of sugar.

3. You need some FRESH apples, better straight from apple-tree. Don't peel them! Just thoroughly wash them with warm water and cut into 4 or 8 pieces. Do not remove the seeds, ever!

4. Clean up the jars with household soda or work them up inside with steam (sterilize to kill bacteria and spend the time either).

5. Start boiling 2 lids and keep doin' it until everything else is ready.

6. Boil up 5 litres of water, then add sugar stirring slowly from time to time.

7. When the syrup starts to gurgle, start smiling to yourself.

8. Put the apples into two jars and pour the syrup there, full to the brim.

9. Wait for a while. The air bubbles will go out and free some space in the jars. Fill them again with the rest syrup.

10. Don't wait! Snatch the hot lids from boiling water and seal them one by one using sealing machine carefully.

11. Turn the jars upside down and put them in a warm place covered with any rag (to keep warm).

12. Forget it for twenty-four hours.

13. Turn the jars back normal side up and hide them in a cold secret place your children will never know.

Zdrast-vwy Dee-ma

Witty Russian Guy with Two Young Daughters owned a car. It must have been a Lada. It ran inconsistently. Usually I travelled around Kaliningrad by trolley or bus, but sometimes Witty Russian would give me a ride.

Once we stopped for gas. Now, gas stations in Kaliningrad at that time did not look like gas stations back home. They hadn't any infrastructure. No mini-marts, of course, and no shelter from rain. No windshield-washing stations. No garbage cans. No pavement, sometimes. The hoses had no automatic shut-off, so you either splashed gasoline on yourself when the tank overflowed (this happened to me, which amused everyone around), or you didn't fill your tank completely.

Anyway, Witty Russian Guy with Two Young Daughters and I stopped for gas at a station which had two pumps, one for regular and one for premium gasoline. Witty Russian asked me what I thought of that. "What is in the premium pump?"

I tried to remember the technical difference between the two, gave up, and said in my rudimentary Russian, "Good gas."

Which made him laugh. "No," said he. "In Russia, premium gas is watered down."

Trust

Yesterday from the Skyliner chair I watched a man ski beneath us, fast and confident, making pretty turns. I thought at first that he was a course worker. He carried a lot in his arms; I thought he was probably carrying poles or stakes.

In fact he had a child in his arms. As they skied beneath us I heard the child laughing.

Do you remember trusting someone else's abilities that completely?

Or your own?

Smells

The neighbor who lives immediately behind me commented that she missed seeing my laundry blowing in the wind. At first I thought she was being facetious -- her back windows look right on my clothesline -- but then we talked for awhile about the clothes-drying habits of our grandmothers. Of course ever since, I've felt guilty for my reliance on the electric dryer. I mean, if anyone should dry their clothes on a line, it's desert-dwellers.

So, so. Yesterday I hung a load of laundry in the sunshine, leaving it all day -- it is only 38 degrees -- and now our clothes smell like wood smoke.

I like it, actually.

Pine pitch

I said that ponderosas are so straight and tall with branches starting up so high that they can't be climbed unless one is an acrobat.

While that's generally true, of course it's not absolutely true. Photo taken yesterday near Lava Island falls.

One detail I remembered yesterday: climbing ponderosas is sticky. You smell like pitch afterward.

Etcetera etcetera

Henry's ponderosa tree is not just his best friend; that tree is Henry's hero.

All ponderosas are rather heroic trees. Noble. In a mature forest they grow so straight and tall, with branches starting up so high, that they're just above people -- like an eagle, like the sky. One walks on roots. Ponderosa pine needles are as long as a person's foot or longer; their pine cones fit one to a hand. Their bark is thick enough to withstand fire, and in fact ponderosas prefer a good burn. Clears out the detritus. Their trunks scald, they might drop a few lower branches, and then they nod thanks.

Henry's tree, as I have said, is not like those others. It's quite tall but it lists; it grows out over the river. It asks to be climbed. And so Henry climbed it.

The first time he met that tree, Henry and his family had pitched a tent nearby. School had just let out. Later in the year they would hike to camp spots in the High Lakes; this place so close to town was a kind of early summer camping practice. The kids practiced falling asleep near their parents. The parents practiced letting their kids roam. Henry tended to roam far, so his parents were happy when he found a nice climbing tree that would keep him busy but close.

The second time he found the tree I described to you already. That was the time he discovered the tree could hide him, and he threw pine cones at his sister like some mad squirrel.

The third time he climbed the tree, it saved his life.

More about Henry and his ponderosa tree

Because Henry's ponderosa tree is crooked, it has branches low down on its trunk. Climbing that tree is like climbing a ladder, although rougher under the hands.

One day last summer Henry discovered he could disappear into that tree. His parents had been roasting hot dogs over a fire, his sister playing hop scotch in the dirt. Henry, bored, wandered over to his tree and climbed it -- climbed it higher than ever before. After awhile his sister came to tell him that dinner was ready. She called and called, she even looked into the tree, but she didn't see him. Finally he tossed pine cones down around her, which scared her half to death. (Never do this. It was very bad of Henry. Ponderosa pine cones are so big and heavy they could really hurt a person, especially a little sister.)

After that Henry always climbed into that hidden space. He could watch the world go by but the world never saw him. It was like being let in on a secret. Once he spent hours watching people hiking the trail below. Once he turned his back on the hikers and looked over the water instead. A blue heron stood on a rock. All kinds of smaller birds flew around. It was still early enough in the summer for the tree frogs to be talking, although he didn't see any; but he did once see a river otter, or thought he did. As he sat, the wind would sweep through all the pines in the forest and they'd make a sound like the roar of traffic, like cars in the distance. The tree moved hardly at all. It held him.

Falling down

I set myself a couple of goals this month, one of which was to write a blog post a day (for writing practice). Then the US financial system began to implode -- a few months after our local economy came to a screeching halt, by the way, causing problems for quite a lot of people -- and writing about plants and children, as I always do, seemed inappropriate. When debris is falling, one ducks, right? Runs for cover? It's foolish to stand here with an umbrella talking about my funny, adorable kids.

On the other hand, perhaps we're in a tent waiting out a snowstorm; if so, we could spend the time talking about what interests us.

*

Did you hear the story about the boy -- his name is Henry -- whose best friend is a ponderosa tree? Henry has a ponderosa tree in his front yard, and it's a fine tree but it's not his best friend. His best friend stands in a forest of other ponderosas down by the Deschutes River.

Now, most ponderosas, like the one in his yard and the others in the forest, grow straight-straight-straight-straight (straight as a board) and their branches start up so high you'd have to be an acrobat to climb one. Henry's ponderosa is crooked. It leans out over the river. Its branches are low and thick. Henry can climb it without a worry; he can sit in it secure as a squirrel, peeling off pieces of bark and tossing them in the river below.

Henry's mother said he has a porcupine family to thank for his crooked tree. She said porcupines will girdle trees with their nests. Henry replied that he would say thanks, if he ever could find a porcupine to say it to.

*

I thought up this story the other day. Tt's not finished yet, of course. This is just a sketch... Sasha says there's no way a kid could have a tree for a best friend, but Blake thinks it's possible. What do you think?

A garden surprise

In the back yard of our new house is a flower garden. It's not very big: maybe 8' square. When we moved here in April the garden bed was the kind of mess you'd expect after a hard winter. I spent a day cleaning it up and -- before it bloomed, before I knew what I'd miss -- I cordoned off a section for my vegetable garden. I turned that soil over and amended it a bit. In May my daughter and I planted radishes, carrots, peas.

The flower garden bloomed wonderfully. It's still blooming now. The vegetables, however, were a disaster. The carrots and radishes never set, the pea vines grew about a foot tall. I thought that the area didn't get enough sun (it's shaded by the linden part of the day), but my mom said no; my mom said I just needed to fertilize like crazy.

So this afternoon I got out my compost and shovel and turned over the vegetable remains and ... clank.

Clank?

There's a cement slab under my vegetable garden. The previous owners laid a foot of dirt on top of a cement slab, and I tried to grow carrots in it.

I want to make a joke of this, but in fact it made me feel so sorry for myself. We bought this house because it has a large, private yard, a third of an acre! and yet there's no place for me to plant vegetables. The back yard is too shady (and underlain in places by cement) and the front yard is a slope frequented by deer and quail.

I know there's a solution to this but I am TOO SAD to think of one right now.

Ptttth.

Post script

It was a wood rat.

Was.

Bump in the night

A creature's living in our garden shed.

I saw it first one late spring day when I reached in the shed to get my clippers. A grayish blur scurried away from me quick as a squirrel escaping a dog, and in fact I figured a squirrel had gotten closed in there somehow. But I glimpsed it there again and again throughout the summer. It's startling and just a bit frightening. What if the creature is rabid? What if it's a mean old raccoon? It's probably not. But what if it is? Just in case, I throw open the shed door with a bang and a shout.

No one else ever saw this creature, neither my husband nor the children, and I don't think they quite believed in it. Jennifer's afraid of the dark, hey? Seeing ghosts! Last week, however, the creature made a mess in the shed. It knocked over pots, tore open my packets of seeds, gnawed on some boards and left scat everywhere.

So, so. On Friday I threw open the shed door with a bang and a shout, and the creature scurried out so I could clean up after it. I thought that if I made the shed inhospitable -- if I cleared out any hiding places or bedding material -- it might go away. I swept and made piles of things that could be recycled, things that had to be trashed. The kids kept coming by with various sized containers, hoping to catch it. No, it's bigger than that! I'd say. Bigger than that, too! Since I'm the only one who'd seen it, only I could say: it's as big as Raincloud the guinea pig! But with a long tail!

An hour later -- after I'd gazed in satisfaction at my (comparatively) clean shed -- I heard a noise. A gnawing, like the guinea pigs gnawing on cardboard.

Oh no! I missed a box! It took that creature seconds, mere seconds, to make itself a new nest in the one box remaining in the shed.

Yesterday and today my husband has gone out to the shed armed with a flashlight, opening the door with a bang and a flourish just as I suggested ... and seen nothing. There's the box with a new hole it it, but nothing else. No creature.

Maybe we have a very messy ghost.

Hot, damn hot, real hot

I've composed about a dozen posts in my head but written none because I just realized that Bend's eight-week summer is nearly over, and so many things seem more important than writing!

The end of last week and through the weekend was freakishly hot. It was so hot, the squirrels played in my sprinklers. It was so hot, the deer and the dogs both leapt into the river. The soles of my burst into flame, flies spontaneously combusted, eggs fried before I put them in the pan...

Well, maybe not. But it was 106 degrees on Saturday.

This was just an ordinary August weekend but it felt like a holiday, perfect strangers gossiping and laughing together. Friday at Elk Lake I ran into a friend I haven't seen in a year, who was with other people I haven't seen in two years, children grown from fry to fingerlings; everyone was up in the mountains, the whole town, seemed like. That little beach at Elk Lake looked like the Jersey shore.

Rainwater

I woke this morning to a pummelling on the roof so deafening I thought it must be hail, and leapt to open the curtains and watch: but no. Just rain. From our bedroom in this new house I can watch the clouds and rain move from the western to the eastern sky: from the mountains to the desert.

About 9am another boisterous storm rolled right over our house, thunder and lightning and more pummelling rain. Rain rain rain rain rain! We don't get rain very often. I raced to open the windows and doors so the wind could rush through, and I dragged the kids onto the porch; but when we saw lightning strike right there, right over there, I figured that wasn't so wise... The thunder terrified Sasha, too, who would liked to have spent the storm in her closet.

According to KTVZ, a power line transformer blew near Drake Park, which must have been caused by the lightning strike we saw. They say lightning struck a tree at a golf course off Mount Washington Drive, which would be just a hop and a skip from my house.

*

At the library I found a book for the kids called "Wonderful Houses Around the World," which includes the homes of the Diola people of Senegal, whose roofs are shaped like a funnel; rainwater runs down the funnel and pours into a clay barrel. (The link shows the photos from the book.) So. During today's thunderstorm I imagined what it must be like to live in such a house during a storm: how exciting it would be! But -- how would you keep the kids from jumping in the barrel?

Under water

In Camp Sherman today I tried to photograph two footbridges. (I can't show you the photo because some computer cords went missing during our move.) My mother-in-law built one of the bridges when she laid some planks across the mud so that she could walk from her house to the meadow without losing a shoe; she built it a few years ago and now it's partially decomposed, lying under a few inches of clear, cold water. Above that old bridge, just barely above the water, is a new one built by my mother-in-law's oldest son: four wooden rails laying side-by-side. Neither bridge was ever especially sturdy. The original bridge had a wang in it, so that when you crossed your weight dipped you into the water. The rails my brother-in-law put down are strong, but they roll.

I thought about those bridges all day today. Someone placed a few leftover pieces of wood across the mud: a bridge. The bridge was nice but then it drooped too much and so someone else, someone younger and stronger, found some more wood and placed it across the mud. For awhile the two bridges stood together, sort of overlapping, until one winter that first bridge collapsed.

But also, you know, the first bridge is still there. It's still visible under the water, not shadowy like a dream but perfectly clear. You could touch it if you wanted.

*

I've rewritten this post five times. It's been shorter each time. Now it's 1:30am and this version seems to make the most sense but who knows? I can't believe I wrote all my college essays at this time of the morning. Imagine the grades I'd have gotten if I wrote at, say, 11:30pm.

Found objects 2

When my husband moved in with me he brought a lot of stuff: skis, bikes, clothes, lots of furniture and a reprint of Dali's Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man. I didn't mind any of it but the reprint, which I find creepy and disturbing. The skis could stay in the hallway where I tripped over them every day, but that poster -- no, I wouldn't have it around. So it went in the closet.

Ten plus years later -- yesterday, actually -- while my husband was dragging stuff out from our storage area, we rediscovered the Dali reprint. Blake dropped everything to stare at it. He squatted in front of it for at least 20 minutes. I kept asking what he thought of it but he couldn't tell me... We brought it inside and he studied it while eating his snack; when Sasha came home, he shouted Look! and the two of them before it for awhile longer. Then Blake said, "I can't think about that picture with my eyes open," and he lay down in his bed, put his head under his pillow.

Why did he find it so interesting? What was he thinking? His reaction was strong enough that I am almost willing to allow it into the house.

Found objects

Yesterday I found a ponderosa seed in Sasha's bucket of beads, brown-black and as tiny as the bits of plastic. It had sprouted.

This afternoon, while exhorting the daffodils to duck back down into the earth for goodness sake it's only March -- and letting the tulips be, since they're for the deer -- I found the upper half of an action figure popping out of the dirt. It wasn't Spider Man or a Ninja Turtle; it was a farmer. She still had her hat.

Perspective II

Once upon a time and long ago, I lived in a hotel that was used by circus performers. The hotel sat on a cobblestone street adjacent to Dome Square, Riga's central plaza, where young men played violin and cello in the shade. The hotel had a lovely, aged facade; inside, it smelled like -- well, I've never smelled that smell in the US. It smelled like old air. Like 500-year-old air. Musty. Inside the hotel was spare as a cave and in fact the building seemed to me naturally-occurring rather than man-made. I had a room, just a room, four walls and a bed, with one glorious, hip-to-ceiling window. I lived there through a summer and sat on the window ledge every day, listening to the musicians and to people talking below and, in the evening, to the breeze. A young English journalist who worked out of the room next-door sometimes joined me. We'd sip shots of vodka and talk about life. The (shared) bathroom was not clean, the shower had no hot water and I slept in a sleeping bag laid on a bare mattress -- but oh, I enjoyed that place.

When I rented the room they told me that since it was the circus' hotel, I could only stay until the performers returned from -- wherever they were -- in the fall. In those peripatetic days I never stayed anywhere for long; the hotel was my third residence in a year; and I liked it that way. Moving around was a good way to experience the city. Also, it was easy. Everything I owned fit in a backpack.

*

The other day I ran out to the Goodwill truck, which very conveniently spends its days in the parking lot of a grocery store just a mile from my house. I gave away some clothes which no longer fit me, and vases I haven't used since they arrived at my doorstep bearing "Happy Valentine's Day" and "Happy Mother's Day" cards, and some other things, God knows what -- three backpacks full of stuff.

Locavore

Our garage floor is covered in cinders, crushed red cinders which fall off the wheels of the car. I sweep the mess out to the driveway and then into the grass and flower beds. (Every year my house is buried just a little deeper in lava.)

When snow falls hard and fast the city pours cinders onto the roads. When the snow melts, as it has done these last few weeks, the cinders remain. Rolling tires push the cinders aside, they mound beside the curbs. All our paved roads are turning to dirt.

The other day my son rode his scooter in socks -- why, I have no idea; didn't it hurt? wasn't he cold? -- which I discovered only after the hardwood floors and the leather couch and even the coffee table had been covered in those fine grains.

One of these days I'll take a microscope to my carpets. Cinders, ponderosa and juniper pollen, some food crumbs -- and, no doubt, the crushed remains of plastic children's toys.

*

For the curious: One of my neighbor's and I have decided to carpool. It completely relieves my need to leave the house before 10am on Thursdays and Fridays -- and on those days I never have to get in a car at all. I can walk anywhere I need to go. It is glorious.

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.