West to Destiny

2008-11-28T15:41:00.000-08:00

The stripping away of layers. Clarity and simplicity. Two things that seem absent in my everyday life. There is so much white noise. Is it being in a city? Is it having the job I have? Is it relationships and friendships taking away from time alone? I don’t know. I want to breathe deep, sweat, and cry, feel part of the essential human condition. I use to get these feelings only by being inspired by a place, but I’m finding I’ve learned to source it by running, swimming, and biking. Allowing the hard work to focus my thoughts and feelings, distilling them down from the complications and difficulties I ascribe them in everyday life.

I cannot tell if I am content or not in most moments. I am definitely comfortable and warm, but I am not sure that equals happiness for me. I can easily wrap myself in these feelings, sleep soundly and deeply, but it doesn’t quite fit yet, or maybe ever. The only thing I can figure out to do is to turn away and do something entirely different. Something that gives me an outsider’s perspective on my own life. I am not sure where this need to run away from my life originates from, but doing so always restores my wholeness. For the last few years, I’ve wanted to avoid that inclination and learn to live in a stable, constant f life by making small calibrations. But right now, I need to live bravely, face my fears and desires and strengths. The feeling has been bubbling over and building for a long time now, and I am working up the strength to embrace it. I see myself on the road again…

Multitudes

2008-11-20T17:09:00.001-08:00

I use to think my heart beat in rhythm to the crashing of ocean waves. It doesn’t, and maybe it never really did. I realized this in my twenty first year when I saw the big sky and big mountains of Montana. My heart changed forever that day; something I am still reconciling and figuring out. How a moment is so meaningful and how memory expands and contracts the moment for the rest of your life. It is part of my subconscious everyday. I didn’t apply to the University of Montana Law School, maybe I should have. But I am mostly too scared to revisit those feelings and find out they don’t add up. True love like that is terrifying, overwhelming, and mostly imagined. I am surprised that years later, I am still working out the feelings. How does something stick to you in that way? It really is a type of stickiness, my feelings.

Law school

2008-06-12T14:57:00.000-07:00

Over a year must have passed since I first started this blog. For the last few months I even forgot I had it. But just now, I happened to come across it again and the irony of what I'm about to say is sweet. I AM ABOUT TO START AN LSAT CLASS THIS SATURDAY! In all likelihood, I will be applying to law school this fall. It's amazing what can change in a year...or even less time. Maybe I should change this blog to a law blog...nah...although I am always tickled by the Arrested Development joke about the Bob Loblaw Law Blog.

Gettin Back on the Wagon!

2007-11-26T13:37:00.000-08:00

Where have I been these past months? I'm not sure, but I wish I had stories to tell. Places discovered, experiences remembered, people met. I guess I do somewhere, but not enough on the surface, and not in an inspiring way.

I have now reached 121,000 miles in green Volvo.

Long Ago and Faraway

2007-02-12T18:39:00.000-08:00

Excerpt from my journal, one year and 3 weeks ago...

People who want to be philosophers or poets should come to Montana. The air, the water, the mountains, and the forests – at least one of these are bound to inspire reverence.

It is the water and the mountains that inspire me. Once I hit the Missions and Flathead Lake in the northwestern tip of the state, I immediately yearn to stop my car, grab a few things out of the back, and head out to see where the wind takes me.

After spending six months in Montana, I feel only the most superficial familiarity with all the landscape has to offer. After all, as a native easterner, I have no point of reference or comparison for such topography.

In order to get to Kintla Lake, we crossed the ice-cold rushing waters of the Flathead River. The water was waist deep and with a full pack and skis sticking up the back, we were glad we made it across. With each step our confidence drained as the power of the water and sheer coldness made it impossible to feel or think about anything. We hiked up an embankment of snow that was also waist deep. We only had to go about a quarter of a mile to get to the trail. The sheer difficulty of moving through snow that deep took us over two and a half hours. When we finally reached the trail to begin skiing the sun was heading west down below the mountains. We skied in four miles and set up camp.

It was a cold night, as one would expect from a Montana winter. For nights such as these, whiskey was invented. In our tent, with all the layers we owned on, a flask of whiskey was passed around, and shortly after, we felt warm and exhausted enough to sleep.

The next morning we woke up stiff from the cold. As we skied on, we saw three sets of fresh mountain lion tracks – our hosts had known we spent the night. Farther up, was a fresh white tail deer antler shed, the blood and smell still lingering on the end that dropped. The deer was not more than a few years old but it was well fed and the antlers had begun to branch, indicating that if this deer lived, he would grow into a large buck.

Upon return to the front country, it is Montana culture to go to the nearest town and go into the first bar. To uphold this ritual, we stopped in Polebridge, which does not constitute much of a town, although it technically has its own zip code. Polebridge consists of the Northern Lights Saloon and the Mercantile. Around these two main establishments sits a few cabins inhabited by the family that runs the town. In the summer, the saloon serves the finest pizza on Fridays often with impromptu live music from one of the regulars. However, this visit to the saloon consisted of the three of us and the bartender, Heather. Drinks were had we left to drive up the North Fork Road.

Some mention must be made of the North Fork Road in the sense that to anyone of northwest Montana, it remains the truest representation of the state. The closest town is anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour depending on how far up the road you are. Closer to town the road becomes paved but the “true” North Fork is still dirt and dust. There exists a magical moment every time the pavement ends and the car hits the dirt.

Sometimes A Great Notion

2006-11-22T10:22:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-15T20:36:00.001-08:00

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

2006-11-10T20:41:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-07T11:34:00.000-08:00

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

Dry the Rain: Disaster Prepardness

2006-11-05T19:54:00.000-08:00

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.

I Walk the Line

2006-10-10T19:19:00.000-07:00

There is something that has prevented me from writing these last few days. It is a question of style and content: How do I strike a balance between invoking the reverence and spirituality towards the places I go to explore without sounding insincere or derivative? It is hard, and I want to know if I walk the line.

Climbing up Neahkahnie Mountain (1,631) in the Oregon Coastal Range this weekend was a moment that seemed to put this particular problem into focus. To see a Northwest forest in the rain is to see something normally quite beautiful become absolutely alive and at its most natural. Through the Sitka spruce and Douglas fir needles the rain droplets and light held in the air to create rays and prisms of light. A grove of trees easily transformed to have the same effect as almost any beautiful European church I’ve set foot in.

There were two equally intense emotions I felt on Neahkahnie Mountain: One was spiritual and the other was love, and at lots of moments, they sort of became the same thing. On the one hand, it is religion, from what I know of it: It is elements of ancient mysticism, Eastern religious thought, and even Native American belief systems. But it is also like love, or maybe more infatuation. It like meeting the most beautiful, interesting, and wise person imaginable. How else do you talk about these feelings without reverence, respect, and awe?

I think that the only way to talk about nature is to speak in terms of human experience because that is the only way in which to make language at all invocative of the emotions. I understand what I experience as love, reverence, beauty, respect, curiosity, and mostly awe. I think these words speak most strongly to spiritual and romantic language. I have decided, although, I am sure my feelings may change, that the best way to talk about nature and the emotions I often find it invoking in me are not new words. I am a blip in all of this, and so I find that using the terms and language established by lots of blips throughout history to be the truest way to express what I have to say. Centuries worth of blips add up to a lot -- reflecting the evolution of human societies to their landscapes and lots of experiece.

With the rain obscuring my view of the ocean and the Coastal Range, the climb was exciting because of by what I could hear of the rain drops against the trees, rock, and dirt and all that I could smell of the earth and wetness. When I looked up I saw nothingness -- these were the moments when spirituality and love mindgled most simply and purely. There was nothing I could see, and so what there was to experience in those moments went inward. It was not filtered through my eyes but my ears and my nose. There was nothing to see but there was not nothingness.

The Rivers Run Through It

2006-10-04T19:13:00.000-07:00

On the holiest of Jewish holidays, Yom Kippur, I always look for a river. It is a tradition to take bread, rip a piece off for each sin or transgression committed throughout the previous year, and send the bread down the river. This symbolism has always spoken nicely to my view of things.

When Yom Kippur rolled around this year, I didn’t look for the biggest river I cold find; although, when I was younger that mattered to me. The smaller streams were often full of ducks that would eat my sins before they could wash out of my sight. Sometimes I left with a heavier heart than when I arrived. I was not sure of the significance of having my sins eaten by another animal rather than washed away. Now I surely think it speaks to the relationship between humans and the natural environment, but at the time those thoughts were very far from my mind. I chose the Deschutes and Columbia rivers this year for the symbolic rite mostly because there are no ducks in it as far as I’ve seen, and for the first time in my life I wanted to see my sins float away -- out of my hand, out of sight, and out of mind.

On Yom Kippur I drove out to the Deschutes River and stopped at the point where it spilled into the Columbia – Deschutes State Park. I decided that if I was going to attempt to wash away my sins I wanted the entire bang for the buck that I could get. And surely, having your sins washed away in two rivers must be better than only one. As the bread left my hand, left my sight, left my mind, I decided to explore what lay in front of me.

With my bike I set off on the trail toward the old Harris Ranch ten miles into a deep canyon cut by the Deschutes River. There was something about following the Deschutes upstream that spoke to my other religious inclination: fly-fishing and overall river meditation. From my vantage point I could see pools and ripples near perfect to cast into. I had such a clear picture from my view that I couldn’t have had a better sense of how to fish that river than if I had been told beforehand by an experienced angler.

From where I was there was no way down to the river without a long fall, so I kept biking and watching the river. There is an amazing moment in Oregon where the high desert gives way to the lush mountains of the Cascade Range. It is a moment that I have concentrated to see on more than one occasion and have somehow I have always missed the essence of it. Biking along the high desert landscape, the sagebrush and cliffs looked straight out of the middle of Wyoming.

The other side of the canyon carved by the Deschutes is entirely rich and different geologically. It is made of red mesas and gray lava cliffs that speak of some other inspiration entirely different from its across the river neighbor. The mesas were full of such intricate rock patterns that each piece looked individually placed and I could almost make out a pattern of a bird emerging from the rock.

The geologically rich landscape exists along an equally rich human one. Along the trail lies old farm equipment rusted and sun bleached. But my favorite artifact along the trail was and an old claw foot bathtub placed so randomly that it could almost be some sort of art installation.

Upon reaching the old Harris Ranch homestead I stopped. I do not think I really could have had any other reaction upon seeing the old homestead. The house remained very intact with the old fashioned stove still inside, although it was badly busted. The animal holding pens remained open in such a way that I imagined someone herding them back from the pasture on the gentle slopes above.

The way in which the ranch was abandoned made it feel like the family had only gone for vacation and in their absence someone had burglarized the house explaining why there wasn’t any furniture. As much as I have tried to find out more about the Harris Ranch, I have not been able to aside from the single fact it was built at the turn of the twentieth century. I suppose with the family went the story.

I stood still listening, mesmerized by the wind. It was too quiet and too loud in the way that only prairie wind can sound. It is geologic history, it is human history, it is my own history ending in the river. Holy or sinful it all washes away.

On Manifest Destiny

2006-10-01T18:24:00.000-07:00

I have wanted to complete Manifest Destiny since first hearing about this prophetic historical and political concept in eighth grade social studies. Despite learning about the actual realities of such expansionism, I have always felt it was right for me to move westward in successive stages re-enacting the legacy of United States settlement. If only James K. Polk could know how strongly his words and deeds resonated in my twelve-year-old heart and mind.

Anyone who knows me well, or anyone that has talked to me for upwards of half and hour, has heard me talk about Manifest Destiny. And at age 22 – both my golden birthday and a palindrome – I have completed the lifelong dream and have moved to Oregon. Interestingly, and not all that surprising, the historical and political origins of the phrase relate directly to the acquisition of Oregon in the nineteenth century.

As a U.S. history memory refresher: Originally the U.S. and England had both occupied the Oregon territory. However, in the 1840s a bunch of brave pioneers started making their way to Oregon along the Oregon Trail. With all these new Americans in the area the U.S pushed to claim more of the territory. In there effort to show just how much they meant business, the Polk administration created such catchy phrases as, “The Whole of Oregon or None” and “Fifty-Four or Fight.” After time and the necessary political machinations, the U.S. and England agreed to draw the boundary at the 49th parallel, and Manifest Destiny was realized and continues to exist in this form today as the boundary between the U.S. and Canada.

And here I am today living out the dream…the dream of my forefathers. But history and politics aside, Manifest Destiny has guided almost all of my major life decisions up to this point. I went to college in Ohio, took a semester off from college and lived in Montana, graduated from college and moved out to Oregon. I have consciously made all of these decisions in an effort to complete Manifest Destiny and reflect the gradual expansion and historic shift westward. As easy as it might have been to move directly out West, I have never considered that as an actual option. It is as simple as this: Manifest Destiny was a movement with progressive westward stages, and so my geographical choices have mimicked this reality.

It is only now that I have actually completed Manifest Destiny that I have begun to wonder what I would have done if I had grown-up in the Mid-West or the West Coast rather than New Jersey. It just doesn't seem the same to try Manifest Destiny in reverse.

The New Oregonian

2006-09-30T19:00:00.000-07:00

My first adventures in Oregon had moments that can only be classified as comic disasters: driving six hours and forgetting my front mountain bike tire, eating cheese and developing explosive diarrhea, rushing down a mountain to find a bathroom and twisting my ankle in the process, and developing blisters while having explosive diarrhea and trying to rush down a mountain. But I can’t say that those moments truly surprise me or even upset me. They mostly seem par for my course and only minor setbacks in otherwise exciting and interesting new experiences.

After I researched different options in books, maps, and the Internet, I decided upon Saddle Mountain. It seemed right for the kind of mood I was in: short, steep, and dangerously rocky towards the summit. Saddle Mountain also happens to be the tallest mountain in the northern Coastal Range in Oregon rising at 3, 283 ft above sea level. In my mind, the fact it was the tallest mountain in the northern Oregon Coastal Range compensated for my desire to experience more significant elevation now that I was no longer living on the East Coast.

The beginning half of the climb was smooth and full of switchbacks revealing rolling green forest. As the climb left the forest canopy, the trail became progressively steeper and rockier. The rest of the way up was full of cables, sliding rock, and exposed ridges. The views of the surrounding mountains were full or steep rock drop-offs and devoid of any trees. The last part of the climb was particularly challenging with the cables and the steps more unreliable than the sliding rock paths.

The top of the mountain was broad and flat with views of Nehalem Bay, Mt. Hood, Mt. Jefferson, and the Columbia River. The most striking thing, however, were not the snow covered Cascades, the river, or the bay, but the Weryhauser clear-cuts. Swaths of forest missing from the dense compact green of the surrounding landscape. At that moment, I wasn’t sure what I felt -- anger, indifference, or sadness at climbing atop a mountain to be struck most strongly not by the beautiful natural features surrounding me but by what had been taken and what was missing.

One thing I have felt strongly since moving to Oregon is a sadness in the landscape that makes it more beautiful and more disappointing. Everything beautiful here is tempered by a dam or by clear-cuts, and I’m not entirely sure how this makes me feel. I understand and even believe in circumstances where these things are not entirely evil. However, being confronted by these things has made me realize that I must adjust to my new surroundings and figure out my relationship to this environment and who is using it and how it is being used. I know I don’t want to be the kind of newcomer and recreationist who has a knee-jerk disapproval and judgment of logging in a region that depends on it. And I don’t necessarily believe that harnessing the water of the Columbia or Clackamas River to create hydroelectric power for the Portland metro area is bad…but I also am not sure if deep down I think it is right either.

The truth is that I do not have an informed enough view to develop the type of nuanced and intelligent opinion that I want to have. All I’ve got is instincts. I don’t know yet what it is like to live in a metropolitan area full of forest, mountains, rivers, and ocean and what it is like to have a relationship with these features as a recreationist and as a consumer of all the resources these things provide me. But these are essentially the questions that propel me into explorations and new adventures. I’m not sure what I would do if the answers actually appeared in front of me – easy, tangible, and concrete.

As I walked down the mountain a middle-aged and shirtless man was huffing his way up. I stepped off to the side to let him continue up and told him that he had the top of the mountain all to himself. “Right on, right on,” he said to me, “And, oh, by the way, there are is a cold present for you on the way down, but leave one for me.” As I slid down the rocks and cursed the blisters forming on my feet, I slipped down to see two Alaskan Ambers resting against a tree. So, yeah, whether or not I know the answers, I hope I will continue to meet every adventure with generosity and gratitude along my way.