Empty, con't.

Alejna said she didn't realize that any part of Oregon was desert. Before I met my husband and moved to Oregon in '96, I didn't know it contained desert, either. (As a teen I daydreamed about moving to either New Zealand or Oregon, thinking them equal, climatically speaking.)

But here, look at this precipitation map of Oregon from nationalatlas.gov. Bend straddles the Deschutes River (on the border between the green & the orange), roughly mid-way between Washington and California. Dry, dry, dry. You can see why we have just two local CSAs, and why I'm thrilled and kind of mystified that mine begins providing vegetables in mid-May.

Bend is the most heavily-populated town in all that orange bit. By a lot. We have 80,000 residents.

P.S. My friend and fellow Bendite SMJ did a great write-up of the Nature of Words event, the one I mentioned last week — an especially incredible event in context of that map below.

Setting (II)

First drafted August 5. I cleaned it up last night.

Central Oregon is desert. My kids call it "the cold desert" to distinguish it from the deserts one sees on TV and in books, with their cactuses and Gila monsters. Around here people call it the High Desert.

It's empty.

Well, of course it isn't empty. The drier, lower areas are pockmarked by junipers, sagebrush, bitterbrush, rabbitbrush. The ponderosas grow at higher elevations: ponderosas with bunchgrass at their feet or, in a very narrow zone, ponderosas with manzanita. Even higher the ponderosas cede to alpine firs.

At all elevations, however, there's a lot of space. Juniper trees don't form a forest; junipers are individuals. They stand one here, one over there, like ancient oaks in a savannah. Sagebrush and rabbitbrush stand alone, too. They don't form hedges. Between the junipers and the brushes you see dirt, you see rocks. Above you see the sky.

*

Photo taken near Silverlake on a very, very smoky day in August (hence the white sky). Fifty points if you recognize the place.

Relentless

In response to recent posts by Jody, Landismom and Chichimama, and an old one by Mimi.

This summer emptying the dishwasher was my son's job. He called it "the dish cycle": clean to dirty and back again, from the dishwasher to the cabinet to the table and back again, over and over, over and over, over and over. At first it amused him but by the end of the season he was almighty tired of the dish cycle.

*

When my kids were tiny everything was so hard; I didn't know how to be either a parent or a housewife and had to learn it all — how to care for a child with a fever, how to cook a hot breakfast for four, how to entertain guests over the holidays, how to choose a daycare — all that stuff was new to me, mysterious, and though exhausting, though often overwhelming, it was interesting.

Now I have become a wife and mother. I'm no longer in the process of becoming. It's done. I've transformed.

I no longer have to blaze the trail. I just have to walk it.

It ought to make me feel victorious, don't you think?

Explaining Portland

For everyone who dreams of someday moving to Portland, listen to the interview with John Raymond at OPB's Think Out Loud. The way he speaks, the cadence of it -- his gravelly voice, his droll, self-deprecating style of speaking -- and what he says is just so Portland.

[Update: OPB has this available as a podcast which you can download on iTunes. It's also on their web site, as I linked to above. You need to click on the teeny tiny "play" icon underneath the title.]

Distracting myself from H1N1

The Deschutes County health department just announced, "We are seeing a surge in the number of people presenting to the medical system with influenza like symptoms" — followed by, "we will only be getting a portion of our expected flu vaccine."

Children are scheduled to be vaccinated through the schools on October 30, but that's still 14 days away. I've been trying to determine whether I can (or ought to) avoid all stores and other public places during that timeframe.

Are you all freaking out about it? My daughter has viral-induced asthma, so I am. A bit. My son is freaking out, too — not because of me, but because of conversations at school. Before he eats ANYTHING, even breakfast, he washes his hands.

So, so. So. I've been distracting myself by thinking about nouns. Nouns have hampered my ability to understand electricity. — Wait! Come back! Hear me out.

"Electricity" is a noun but what we mean by electricity is not a solid, touchable thing, the way you think a noun ought to be. The word "electricity" really describes electric current: an-electric-charge-flowing. It describes an electric charge in motion, the way the nouns "waterfall" or "river" describe water in motion. Or you could say that an electric charge in motion is an event-in-progress, like a song or a lecture.

An electric charge: too many or too few electrons: a state of unbalance. We sometimes say that something "has" an electric charge, but that's a misnomer. Something is electrically charged. It's unbalanced — and it would rather not be; it seeks balance. Often explosively. Rub your feet on the carpet and then touch a doorknob, and you'll see what I mean.

Swishing your feet on the carpet gives you an electric charge. You pick up too many electrons. When you scuff your feet and quick! touch a doorknob! then ZAP. Your extra electrons leap across space to bond with the metal knob. What leaps is the current.

So the flow of that-which-is-charged is an electric current, or electricity. Science books for kids often use a water/river metaphor to explain this concept, but I rather like comparing electricity with life. (Me and Deepak Chopra, right?)

Electricity: that-which-is-charged flowing in search of balance.
Life: that-which-is-alive moving toward...

Oh, great. Now I'm thinking about H1N1 again.

La la la, la la la.

Somebody tell a joke!

Where

Once upon a time and long ago, this guy I know worked nights. He was going to school, too, at that time, so despite the job he hadn’t much money. He owned a truck but never seemed able to fill its tank completely. Sometimes on the way to work he’d run out of gas. He’d have to coast to the side of some silent thoroughfare. He’d swear, sigh, and then start walking, plastic gas can in hand – walking in the dark, in the rain, toward the bright lights of a gas station. Around him the city slept.

I always wondered what he encountered along the way. Surely each of these late-night hikes was a little adventure. What might he have encountered on a rainy night in Portland, back when Portland was a smaller, grubbier city?

*

I just finished reading Orson Scott Card’s book Shadow of the Giant, which was engaging but frustrating because I just couldn’t picture it. I couldn’t visualize the characters or their surroundings. Card didn’t provide enough detail. He’d write: The main characters went to Yerevan. Period. He never said if they’d gone to Yerevan during the day or at night, in winter or spring; he never said whether Yerevan was a tall modern noisy city or a short old musty village. Was it in the mountains or on a plain? Were there pine trees, or was it desert? They were in Yerevan; that’s all he said; so I couldn’t imagine the scene.

*

This past weekend my husband and I celebrated our anniversary in Portland, then drove home along a circuitous, scenic route – a driver’s route, really, following the kinds of unpopulated, narrow, serpentine roads that you see highlighted in Evo magazine. It was thrilling. I cinched my seatbelt.

When we got back on the highway (a one-lane state highway with no traffic; it was fun driving, too), my husband exclaimed at the gauges on his BMW. “We may run out of gas,” he commented. Oh, said I. Hm. We were just outside Dufur (population: 500), an outpost among rolling hills of wheat – hills rolling on and on, as far as one can see, covered in wheat and then patches of sagebrush and then wheat again. If we ran out of gas there, at dusk on a cold autumn day, what would we do? Try to hitch a ride to the next town, I guess. Maybe we could hoof it to a rancher’s house; surely ranchers have spare gas?

*

In the event we did not run out of gas. We made it 60 miles to the nearest (sizeable) town with plenty to spare. The whole way, though, I kept thinking about how the story “We ran out of gas, and then…” hinges on where one ran out of gas. The setting determines the action. Setting matters.

Stories that stick

All across Eastern Europe I bought books. Books in English, I mean. I'd been overseas for a year, stammering in incompetent Russian the whole time, only partially understanding what other people said to me: so I was desperate for stores. I couldn't find any English-language newspaper except The Financial Times (ack) nor any English-language magazine except The Economist (ack); I couldn't follow the local radio, and movies were all dubbed. I wasn't even able to eavesdrop on conversations. Lord, I was desperate for stories.

So as I traveled I stopped in bookstores and bought what they had in English. I was train-hopping around Eastern Europe in the early 1990's and my journals are laced with commentary on Annie Dillard, Joseph Conrad, John Barth. How odd.

These days I hardly ever read novels. They make me too distracted. If I'm in the midst of a novel I find myself staring into space, wondering about the characters, when I am supposed to be getting the children ready for school. Or listening in on staff meetings.

*

Thus ends my prelude to Sweet/Salty Kate's book meme, which I have via Magpie. I skipped the movie-related questions. I do not know anything about movies.


1) You are facing an epic journey. You may choose one companion, one tool and one vehicle from any book or film to accompany you. Or just one of the three. It's up to you. What do you choose?

I'd have Ged from Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea books accompany me. He can bring his wizard's staff and his little boat, the Lookfar. Any epic journey can be improved by the presence of a wizard, I imagine.

2) You can escape to the insides of any book. Where do you go, and why?

To the Portuguese island which is the setting for Madeleine L'Engle's The Arm of the Starfish. It sounds absolutely lovely; also, I'd like to talk to Meg Murray as an adult.

3) You can bring one literary character into your current life. Who do you choose, and why?

At this particular point in my life, I'd welcome the friendship of Stone Telling from LeGuin's Always Coming Home. It would be like having my mom live with me. She's quiet and helpful and knowledgable about homemaking, and she tells great stories.

4) [x] is my go-to book. I could read that book fifty-seven times in a row without a break for food or a pee and not be remotely bored. In fact I’ve already done that but it wasn’t fifty-seven times. It was sixty-four.

I have several go-to books, depending on my mood. Half were written by Ursula LeGuin and the other half by Madeleine L'Engle.

5) Of all the literary or film characters that made an impression on you as a kid, who was the most enviable?

Oh, Vicky Austin. She and Adam Eddington are so much in love that they can communicate telepathically. And he teaches her to ride a dolphin, which becomes her friend in need. And everyone recognizes that she's going to grow up to be a great poet.

6) Of all the literary or film characters that made an impression on you as a kid, who was the most frightening?

Christine, the evil car! Omigod. When I was 12 my best friend loved horror movies. This one was her favorite. During sleep-overs she'd tell me a story in which Christine crashes through the window in her bedroom and kills us both. I NEVER SLEPT during her sleep-overs.

7) Every time I read The Dispossessed, I see something in it that I haven’t seen before.


11) After all these years, the closing scene in the book 2010: Odyssey II still manages to give me a thrill. ("ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE." Eeep!)

13) The coolest non-fiction book I’ve ever read is Annie Dillard's An American Childhood. Every time I flip through it, it makes me want to intone, out a window, "Hello, Horatio."

Parsely, sage, etc. etc.

Once a week I make my way to a gravel alley on the edge of downtown Bend. It's not as seedy as it sounds. Downtown Bend is a cute, touristy place; the alley I visit is in an area that's also cute (but not touristy): it's quiet, shady, filled with little millworker-built houses. Some of the houses have been converted to shops. This particular alley runs behind what is now a nonprofit and a women's clinic. Weedy flowers and shrubs grow in the dirt there — and underneath one of the currant bushes, during the growing season, sit a couple of coolers.

The coolers hold my eggs and vegetables. Well, not just mine. The eggs and veggies come from Gigi, who has a farm east of town. She stops by the alleyway once a week with overflowing canvas bags, and then throughout the day we CSA members open the coolers to exchange an empty bag for a full one.

*

So once a week I unload a bag of just-picked vegetables onto my kitchen counter, getting dirt everywhere and grinning, because just-picked vegetables make me happy. I give the guinea pigs carrot tops and radish tops and onion tops and whatever else I won't eat and then I refrigerate the rest — everything except the herbs. Gigi grows lots of herbs: parsely, sage, basil, thyme, tarragon, oregano, fennel, rosemary. I couldn't possibly use them all in a week, so I dry them. It's easy to do in this climate. The small-leafed herbs will dry in two days just sitting on the counter, believe it or not. Usually, though, I bunch them with a twist-tie and hang them from the cabinet handles. My husband doesn't like this method — he opens a cabinet to get a coffee cup or a glass and, damn!, knocks down a sprig of herbs — but it works well, and I feel so Little-House-on-the-Prairie-ish with these herbs hanging every-which-way!

*

Now I recommend you read Charlotte Freeman's post at Bookslut, which is about, I think, the art of homemaking. It's also about cooking deliciously despite being broke.

The library crowd

A crowd gathers outside the library at 9:50 in the morning. People of all ages: toddlers, teenagers, middle-aged women, an old man on a mountain bike. They stand apart from another, one here one there, shift their weight, squint in the sun. All are silent; even the toddlers are silent; except that a man in need of a shave, wearing jeans and a baseball cap, makes general comments to the air. No one engages him.

At 10am the librarian unlocks the door and, still silent, still separate, they flow inside.

Oh, you're a hedge

The 2 1/2 block walk from my kids' bus stop to our house passes through an overmanicured suburban neighborhood. It's neat. It's orderly. It's stultifying.

And that shows you what I know.

In the no-man's-land between two of those suburban houses stands an arctic willow hedge. Arctic willows are a fast-growing, cold-tolerant bush; around here people often plant them to conceal electrical boxes. The willow hedge that we pass every day stands taller than me and wider than my outstretched arms. Wispy, wavy limbs have begun to reach across the sidewalk. It needs a haircut.

As it turns out, inside the willow hedge is a space large enough for two children. Blake and Sasha can conceal themselves utterly; except for their whispers and laughter, you'd never know they were there. Every day they run ahead of me to slip inside the hedge and then, as I wonder aloud Where could my children be? BOO! They leap at me.

*

We have two willows beginning to hedge in our yard, too. The quail like that space. Some mornings we watch two dozen quail or more cluster under those willows and then, when they deem it safe, pass through to feast on the clover in the grass.

*

Gregory Smith in the magazine Clearing (Jan/Feb 1996), "The development of an ecologically literate citizenry ... may be linked to regular, unstructured experiences in wild places (both urban and rural), much as the development of reading skills depends upon contact with books and adults who read them." Urban, rural — and suburban, too.

Time

Last Friday my youngest child started all-day kindergarten. Do you know what that means?

FREE TIME.

For the last several years I've tried to work 20 hours/week with just 18 hours of daycare or less. Now I have 30 hours of daycare and (at the moment anyway) a 20 hr/week cap on work.

It's, like, totally weird.

I feel I need to fill those extra hours productively: earning money, preferably, or at the very least cleaning the house, winterizing, putting up jars of jam. I feel as though those hours will be revoked if I don't use them wisely. For the last several years I've had to snatch every moment alone, every moment in which I hoped to complete a task; if I wanted to get something done, I had to give up time with my children or my husband. Go watch TV, kids! Mom needs to make dinner!

And now I have free time. Not stolen time. Free!

It's very strange.

In a month I'm sure it will all be reallocated.

Stuff II

Labor Day weekend my husband and I hosted a sleepover for six families at my in-laws' Camp Sherman house. For toys I brought two board games (the forecast called for rain) and a bag full of recycling: egg cartons, empty bottles, stuff like that. We also had two large rolls of duct tape.

If you ever need to entertain 14 children, raid the recycle bin first. Those kids spent hours building boats, launching them in the creek, racing to catch them — and then destroying them and building again.

Listening comprehension

My son tried to fly out of a tree in his geocopter. He scraped himself up pretty badly. To keep him lying down until the biggest scrape stopped bleeding — lying quietly, without whining — I piped the latest RadioLab podcast through the stereo. Have you listened to that one? It's about parasites. It's fascinating. Some scientists claim severe allergies will disappear if one gets hookworm.

Anyway, my 7-year-old listened, entranced, to the whole RadioLab podcast. I quizzed him about it afterward. "The parasitic wasp stung the cockroach in the stomach and then it was able to control the cockroach," he said. "Just like the rat in Ratatouille! It laid its eggs inside the cockroach, and the eggs hatched and ate the cockroach from the inside. It was still alive! Then the babies burst out of its head and it died."

"What excellent listening comprehension," I said. "You understand what you hear."

"Yes, I do." He looked thoughtful. "I don't understand when people are talking to me, though."

"You don't understand people when they talk directly to you?"

"Right. Like when I'm in trouble. I never understand what you're saying."

*

I'm thinking I ought to record some of my lectures so I can play them on the iPod when needed. Like the one about not jumping out of trees while harnessed to a cardboard-and-duct tape geocopter.



The propeller actually works quite well. We flew it off the balcony and it hovered for awhile before dropping. It doesn't hover while he's harnessed to it, though. Picture taken about 8pm — when all inspiration strikes.

Revenge

Earlier this summer, when I realized both my children could climb the silver maple in the backyard, I moved the lava rocks that were underneath it. The rocks didn't look very nice anyway. I think this house's previous owners intended for the rocks to look artfully placed, but to me they just looked like a couple lava rocks dropped at the base of a tree.

So I moved the rocks, and lo! the ants did scurry. Ants had nests beneath nearly every rock; when I moved the rocks I exposed the pupa. I felt badly about it. I did! I covered the pupa with an inch of dirt, hoping that would save them.

A week or so later we noticed that the ants had moved their colonies to the sandy spaces between the pavers of our back deck. My husband said we should kill them; he said that eventually they'd force us to re-lay the pavers. Ah, I thought. That's my fault. But we left them alone.

Two months later, as you know, those same ants have entered my house. Yesterday I found some on my kitchen counter.

And that is the limit to my ant empathy.

Yuck! It's disgusting! When I chop vegetables I'm just sure an ant will climb onto the cutting board and get mixed into the salad. What if I mistake an ant for a sliver of basil and EAT IT? Aack!

Clearly the ant traps I bought aren't working, so I researched alternatives. Borax, said the internet. Bleach, said the internet. Vinegar, said the internet. Baby powder, said the internet.

Baby powder being the least toxic and smelly of those choices, I dug out the bottle left from Sasha's infancy. I sprinkled a line of powder across the kitchen. I sprinkled some where I thought they were entering the living room.

That was three hours ago. I don't want to declare victory too soon; but?

THEY'RE GONE.


(Can I return to my lazy ways in the kitchen now?)

The first frost can't come fast enough

My kitchen is immaculate. That's not usually the case. I tend to leave dinner's pots and pans until morning; and because the kids and I forage all day – sitting down to breakfast or lunch is such a waste of time, don't you think? – there's almost always dirty cups or plates on the counter. I store fruit in a bowl on the counter. I keep the bletch bucket there.

No longer. I wash dishes immediately; I store all food in the refrigerator; the bletch bucket is emptied 10 times a day. My kitchen is immaculate, I tell you.

It's the bugs. I can't stand it anymore. Fruit flies! House flies! Earwigs! Spiders! Moths! The other day I found a gigantic, black beetle in my bowl of strawberries. I've never seen such a beetle. How did it get in the house, never mind in my bowl of strawberries? Eeee-uck.

Also, we have ants. Sugar ants, they call 'em. They're mostly in the living room. The kids and I followed them to try to find their nest; we didn't see evidence of one, but after awhile we realized the ants were entering and exiting from the floorboards near the front door. I bought little ant houses with poison inside. It was an interesting science lesson for the children – kill the queen, kill the colony; but how do you kill the queen if you can't see her? – although I must say it's a lesson I'd rather have taught them theoretically than experientially.

So, yeah. My kitchen is immaculate. At least until the first frost.

The good life

It's been so blasted hot that we spent all Sunday in Lake Creek, the mint-lined stream that runs through a meadow near my in-laws' place. Lake Creek isn't shocking meltwater anymore, and it's not overflowing anymore — when I floated it with Sasha, our float bumped the bottom. It was pleasant. It was calming. My husband and I lounged on aluminum lawn chairs we set in the creek, drinking PBRs while the kids splashed about.

Does that sound hopelessly white trash? Well. So be it. I shall teach my children noodling.

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!