Sometimes A Great Notion

There is usually a moment most days where I think about Montana. It is a mix of missing someone you love and homesickness. When I think about Oregon now, it is mostly in relationship to Montana. Without ancient Lake Missoula, the Willamette Valley and the Columbia River Gorge would not exist. Most of the unique features in the Metro area are linked to geologic activity in Montana. If you look, you can find limestone and other rocks that were carried over and deposited by glaciers here.

I live in Oregon now and I haven’t yet learned how to love it. I know it will come at some point because I found myself missing Ohio once. I never thought I would even like Ohio, let alone miss it. But I’ve always liked openness and infinity and it was only a matter of time until I liked that about the Ohio landscape.

Oregon should be easy to love. I think that everyone around me seems to love it. It has oceans, ancient forest, rivers, and mountains; it is rain forest and high desert. It’s objectively perfect in every respect for someone with my necessities and interests. There are moments it challenges me to think about people and nature, use and misuse, natural and built, in ways that Montana never will.

I don’t want these things. I don’t have any desire to explore my relationship (with not to) nature in any way that is intellectual or academic. I think it should be entirely visceral, tactile, and emotional above all else. I don’t think this approach precludes thoughtfulness or scrutiny; it just gives them a back seat to joy and appreciation.

(Wo)Man and Machine

Dear Green Volvo,

Today you reached 111,000 miles, most of which we have done together. When we're sitting together in traffic, like the the two old friends we are, do you ever think about all the places we've gone together? What are your favorites? I know you probably didn't like those dirt, pitted roads in Montana that much. There was awhile back in Ohio when you were really sick. The AAA mechanics were coming out at least once a week to see you and they all diagnosed you with different problems. No one knew what was wrong and your condition got worse. That was hard. But I always told you that you were the little green volvo that could.

Where do you think you would want to go next? I though maybe our next big trip could be up to British Columbia or Alaska. We always have a good time in wild coutry together. People will totally get a kick out of us because we're from NJ. How many times do you think people have commented on our license plates? By the way, I've always wondered what you would want written on them if you could choose something.

I can't wait until the day when there is three of us: you, me, and the dog. We will be such an inseparable trio. I think you will like having two companions who walk up towards you and like nothing better than contemplating their freedom.

Much love,

D. Wex

By Oil Lamp and Laptop: Heart and Fingers

It's dark outside and I have my oil lamp lit while I type on my laptop. It is an incongruity that suits my mood.

I forgot how much I love oil lamps. They are a beacon of light in a way that candles can't cut it. They are less romantic and dreamy and much more practical and functional. They illuminate darkness enough that you can read and write and cook but without overwhelming you with their light. Oil lamps let you still respect darkness. It feels good; it feels right, to be writing by oil lamp now, even if it is on my laptop. The sound of the rain, the feel of the darkness, and the light from the oil lamp are familiar and comforting in ways that I've been missing pretty badly since moving out to Oregon.

When I woke up this morning, I decided to go get an oil lamp. I made myself some promises awhile back that included less electricity, phone calls, and emails and more oil lamps and written letters. I haven't been so good at doing those things recently because it is lonely sometimes to be in a new place, and phone calls are an easy way to remedy that.

Feelings don't always sneak up on you. This one hit me over the head and knocked me back into orbit. I have to thank Rick Bass' book, Winter: Notes from Montana. It made me miss Montana in all the right ways. It allowed me to reminisce and remember. That is always a good feeling.

I am back in my Montana headspace, the place I am happiest. When I get in this mood, or more accurately, when this mood overtakes me, I have to write. There is too much thought and feeling. I don't know how to get it out without talking everyone's ear off, so I write it. If I didn't have a way to let all these emotions and thoughts transcend me and escape, I'm pretty sure I'd turn into a scientific oddity: I'd burst into thin air and break into a million floating pieces or I'd sink into the ground, all my excitement, love, and awe, becoming part of the landscape, part of the earth.

As Rick Bass says: "I used to think it was, a failing, that I had to be in the wilderness to be happy -- away from most things. Now I'm starting to discover that's irrelevant -- whether it's good or bad, a failing or strength: totally irrelevant. It's just the way I am." As much as wilderness is how I define myself, when I am in it, it becomes irrelevant, incidental. It is when I am away from it and bombarded by things that don't fit right or feel right that I worry that there is something wrong with me. That is when I use wilderness like a blanket. But in the woods, I feel like poetry in motion; I move easily and I am at ease. It is beauty and truth and I know that Keats and the Romantics were right. Truth and Beauty: "The woods can be a bit strange. It takes a long time feel you beling there and then you never again really belong in town."

I think that I'm probably lucky to have such clarity about something. To feel something fully and simply. It is like the Northern Lights. There may be logical explanations but when you are watching it and part of it there are none. Electic and magical and only for you.

Addendum

I was wrong...the rain here does make you wet.

Dry the Rain: Disaster Prepardness

The rain has finally settled in here. For as long as weather.com can inaccurately predict it will be here. I have been mentally preparing myself for this reality for months now. With this preparation, I've also been working on embracing the inevitable. And I'm glad to say that it has mostly worked. One of my favorite things about Oregon is the smell of the rain. Not to mention, the rain here actually doesn't really make you wet. Contrary to logic and all my experience with rain, it seems to mist or spray here rather than rain.

There are times, mainly along the trail, where wet is wet. As the Scandinavian saying goes: "There is no bad weather only bad gear." This has become my mantra. But I will admit, at least half the reason I like being in the mountains or climbing them are the views. The rain and fog obscures pretty much everything in the distance and all you can see is what lay a few feet in any direction. The main benefit of such weather is that I don't have to share the mountains and forests with other people.

This weekend I climbed Dog Mountain in the Washington Cascades. It was a lot of heavy breathing at 6.8 miles and 2,828 feet of elevation and with no views of Mt. Hood, Mt. Saint Helens, Mt. Adams, and Mt. Defiance to provide the usual pay-off. But in the course of climbing, the act of walking up the mountain become sort of rewarding in a way that a sunny day often takes away from me because I'm so focused on how wonderful it will be at the top. In this particular case, the top didn't matter all that much because it wasn't going to be much different from the bottom. I was climbing to learn different things about mountains than all the sunny days at the top could teach me.

I think it is a labor of love and for the first time I actually loved the labor. And as a result, I think what I learned was love. It was mystical and musical in the rain with lots of little muted percussive sounds coming off vegetation and rocks. I've always hated climbing in the rain. The enjoyment I got in the clim was solely in how unhappy I was about being wet and cold and not getting to see anything. It was mostly a matter of being hardcore rather than a matter of having a good time. In fact, the worse the time was the more I enjoyed it in retrospect. I still thing part of me clings to this, but I firmly believe the more I learn about mountains in different weather the less I will feel this way.

Lewis and Clark climbed and explored in the rain. The Scandinavians make no excuses for bad weather. I think I might be starting to understand.