fools and englishmen

We have recently experienced what the NPR meteorologist described as a "classic heat wave," and it would seem that I am no longer the heat-tolerant--nay, heat-seeking--creature that I once was. A few days ago, Kendall and I set out with the dogs, thinking that forests and mountains would offer kinder temperatures than our house.

Excited by the prospect of the green stillness of an old-growth forest and a new perspective on the Twin Sisters mountains, we set off to explore the Elbow Lake trail. At the trailhead, however, we found a river impassable due to high water. The same was true at the Ridley Creek trailhead, just up Forest Road 38. July is the true beginning of summer in Washington and is therefore prime hiking season, but we're still on the cusp of it: the warm weather has yet to melt the snow on the upper trails even as the run-off it generates can complicate the hikes at lower elevations. Grumbling about the many long months without a proper hike, Kendall set off in dogged pursuit of views of the surrounding mountains, all confirmed by the Garmin, the compass, and the topographic map.

As I staggered up an old logging road in the late afternoon heat, however, I began to question the logic of our course. Unlike Kendall, I am not motivated by views alone, nor do I feel a compulsion to finish every trail I begin. Even under the best of hiking conditions, I am much more apt to lag behind, looking at unusual rocks or grasses or soil patterns, or to obsess over what might be a possible change in the weather. His persistance has led me to many more spectacular vantage points than I would have pursued on my own, for which I am genuinely grateful. On this particular afternoon, though, I was just hot. And tired of looking at trees.

Unfortunately, our best views that day came on the drive in; we chalked the experience up to a fact-finding mission and headed home. Nature breeds patience, no matter the season.

reconnaissance

Shortly after we arrived in Bellingham last summer, Kendall and I spotted a sign for beach access along Chuckanut Drive. We parked in the designated lot, and after much scrambling down rocky inclines and thrashing about in the undergrowth, we arrived not at anything resembling a beach, but at a rocky outcrop better suited, as Kendall noted, for plunging to one’s death.

Given that this beach is a landmark important enough to warrant its own parking lot, we figured that, as usual, there was some local trick we’d missed. Yesterday, lured by the summer sun, we again set out in search of the phantom beach. We left the parking lot by way of a different trail, but ended up at the selfsame spot, albeit with fewer mosquitoes this time around. After a sigh of frustration, we sat in silence, taking in the San Juan Islands, dark against the opaque silvery blue of the bay’s sun-lightened waters. It was glorious, but not the beach we’d been expecting. So we set off again, following a hiker’s instructions to continue along the railroad tracks, looking for “a slightly bigger trail, probably with more people on it.” And we did, in fact, happen upon Clayton Beach, a sandy sliver carved out between the forested coastal cliffs and the sea. At low tide, the pocked coastline and barnacle-covered rocks were exposed, and crabs and miniature jellyfish moved through the sun-warmed shallows. The beach was neither more nor less beautiful than the previous spot, and finding it gave the sense of a minor triumph and vague restlessness, the sort that often follows the fulfillment of a long-anticipated desire.

We returned to the car, making mental note of the trail’s contours for a future return. Out of such experiences accumulates, perhaps, a sense of place.

home again, home again

My parents just wrapped up a week-long visit to Bellingham and its environs. We drove the North Cascades Highway, hiked in the Chuckanuts, biked Lopez Island, ate oysters and salmon, visited Re-Bar and Butchart Gardens in Victoria, and otherwise indulged in the local summer pleasures.

What surprised me about their visit, though, was how their presence made Washington feel more like home; something about showing my parents around made me feel less like a long-term visitor here. "Lawrence" is no longer the first place name that comes to mind when someone asks where I live, and I hesitate a little less upon hearing that question.

a taxonomy of signs

There are those happy constellations of events out of which one can infer deeper meaning, particularly if given to a literary bent. By these I mean those circumstances under which the sighting of place names or allusions to books, people, or cultural trends confirm the secret plans, the wisps of desire, the half-formed hopes to which we have yet to give voice. We see in them what we want to see, seeking confirmation outside ourselves.

And then there are those coincidences that come upon us suddenly, speaking in softer tones and so different in scope and imagination from the life we'd imagined for ourselves that those other signs cheapen in comparison. From these latter, I can only surmise that the universe intends that I do something related to China. Or perhaps Toronto.

shadows in green and gray

After slogging through essays and exams and more essays, the academic year ended with the usual, oddly anti-climactic euphoria. To celebrate-and punctuate-this annual change of pace, summer's official arrival, we trekked up to Mt. Baker. It was a return to winter, the rains clinging stubbornly to the foothills and the snow still firmly in command at higher elevations. With warmer temperatures in the forecast, the word on the street was that things would be changing quickly.

But for the moment, though, things were as they had been. The fog hid the views of the river below, and the salal and cedars crowded the trail. Spring appeared only in traces, the bright orange columbine growing alongside a small cascade fed by the nascent spring melt, and lupine, smaller and less exuberant than that in town, rising in delicate purple spikes among the undergrowth. As we climbed higher, the brush ceded to old-growth forest, massive Douglas firs and hemlocks along steep slopes. At the snow line, the trees gave way to an expansive bowl. The clouds sucked in, so that all was grayish white above and below, with only smudges of exposed rock at the rim and the darker, crumpled snow marking our path.

And then, improbably, the clouds parted, revealing patches of genuine blue. The sky lightened in that way that it does here, in which the clouds lessen and the sun casts shadows without revealing itself. We watched the cloud bank moving back along the trail we had ascended, and then, shivering in the cold wind moving down off the snow, turned to follow it.

between extremes

Summers in Washington are, for me, easy to love. The days are long, the berries are plentiful, and the temperatures rise to a pleasant 85 degrees. Sometimes. Summer in Kansas often feels like an endurance test: the ticks, the 100-degree heat, the summer storms of May and June and the searing hot winds of late August. The summer off-sets the endurance test that is a Kansas winter, creating something akin to a balance of extremes. For years, I buffered myself against the cold winds of winter and the summer heat waves by imagining life in a land less mercurial, more temperate in its weather patterns.

Having settled in western Washington, however, the lack of climatic intensity feels odd. Winter was as expected, wet and dark, with the rare bright day counted as an unexpected gift. Spring, though, oh, spring; you caught me unaware. In Kansas, spring is an exuberant, if uneven, extraction from winter's icy grip. Things change. They melt, they give birth, they burst forth. What was once barren, brown, and frozen now heaves with life (often, with insect life), marking a hectic transition from winter to summer. In Washington, spring creeps. It is subtle, the days slowly lengthening, the brighter leaves of deciduous trees filling in the gaps among the evergreens, the shading in of pale new growth at the tips of the Douglas firs and hemlocks. I, the impatient Kansan, frequently missed the cues, my body still attuned to weather patterns over a thousand miles to the east.

let's move to the country

OK, so I’m not ready to go live in a yurt. The attraction is obvious, though, and the desire to chuck it all and return to nature, in various guises, has been a constant companion to the development of industrial society. Perhaps it is the age in which we live, or the stage at which I currently find myself, but a shift toward simplicity seems palpable, no matter how ill defined or short-lived it may be. A malfunctioning system invites questioning, of course, and plenty of people these days have no choice but to operate outside the conventional parameters of success. Part of me really wants to believe, earnestly and wholeheartedly, that the system can still work, despite the recession, despite ecological degradation, despite the acrimony that stalls dialogue. And part of me wants to go bake bread and raise chickens on a farm somewhere.

For me, what provokes envy is the sense of clarity that seems to guide this kind of decision-making. The thought that one could be so deliberate in assessing needs as to pare down both belongings and activities to the most essential is a seductive one. It is also, at least in my imagining, a tad absolutist; it isn’t place alone that effects transformation, after all. As Henry Miller points out in Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, even paradise is unlivable when a person hasn’t figured out how to live with herself.