Fall

After a few hundred miles,  things started looking familiar.  Road names and exit ramps sporadically conjured memories from yesteryear.  Beers in the woods at parent-less McMansions in high school.  Dark thirty to departures heading up to Mt. Hood in the back of a friend's family van.  Tween soccer games at a roadside field.  The closer the Syncro marched towards Portland,  the more the memories flowed.  "Portland International Airport, 20 miles."  No stopping them now.

As I drove north on I-5 through Northern California and Southern Oregon,  the trees changed color by the mile.  No more dodging fall by zipping up and down the California Coast.  Leaves littered the sides of the roads and rain beat down in proper northwest fashion.  At 4:30, the sun set over the hills.  "Fuck daylight savings,"  I mumbled, adjusting the windshield wiper speed.  Five hours later, I pulled off highway 14 at a familiar gas station t0 fill up.  Dressed in shorts, a sweater and barefoot, the 38 degree, rainy night caught me off guard.

Needles and leaves.

A morning hike in the woods.

An afternoon in Portland.

Tim on Prindle Mountain.

For miles.

Harvesting beats from the garden.

Seal Rock.

For the first time in five years,  I was back in the Columbia River Gorge during the height of fall.  Visiting the northwest once or twice  a year, in the summer and around the holidays, limited my view of the place I where grew up.  Just like a new haircut making a familiar person look different,  a change of season makes an old place look new.  Try it sometime.

Here are some more links,

Fall (Picasa),

A Restless Transplant (Facebook).

1995-2011

"The hole could be a couple inches bigger on each side, so it fits in better," my dad said holding a shovel in two hands and staring into the  hole. "He.  I think it fits him pretty well."

After a long pause, Tim added, "He sure loved to dig."

I never thought in advance about what to do after Skookum, my childhood dog, died.  My energy and stress focused on fear of losing a dear friend of the last 16 years and closing a chapter of my life.  Logistics of the aftermath fell within the lee of the stone.  The size of the hole or what my brother and I were  going to dig with didn't come into consideration until after I had pulled out of the animal hospital parking lot.  Unavoidable details erode preconceived notions of what an experience will be like.  They make a story powerful and life real.

Elk Lake

I woke up at sunrise, checked all of the tires on the Syncro, made sure the racks were tight and said my good-byes.  Heading east through the Columbia River Gorge, I pulled off I-84 in Hood River and followed signs towards Mt. Hood and central Oregon.   After a brief stop to inspect the Palmer Glacier, I coasted down the eastern side of the Cascades into central Oregon.

Cross-referencing a moving dot on my Google maps with an out-of-date road atlas of the lower 48 given to me by mom the day I bought my Syncro, I took my time through Madras and Bend.  Stopping for coffee, photos and gas I added two hours to a prescribed four-hour trip.   Following directions texted to me the night before, I arrived at a gravel road with the national forest sign reading "Elk Lake Recreational Area."

Accelerating to the top end of second, the Syncro vibrated down the washboarded road.  Shifting to third, I reached the perfect speed and the rattling finally subsided as pines opened up to an alpine lake.  I followed the lake's east bank, dotted with the occasional sail boat and rustic cabin,  eventually coming to a parking spot behind a clustering of familiar cars.

Inspired by the last remnants of summer,  I pulled off my T-shirt, inspected the depth at the end of the dock, and back pedaled a dozen feet or so.   Taking a deep breath, I sprinted towards the water and braced for the cold.

Adirondack chairs made green for Oregon.

Glassy.

Potable water.

Thunder storms.

Heating.

Storage.

Blue.

Reflex.

Fire light.

Send me the dock.

My feet clapped against the surface as I landed with a less than ideal plunk.  Compensating for my botched dive, I dolphin kicked until my lungs burned, then surfaced with a gasp.  Making my way towards the nearby floating dock one side-stroke at a time, I heard the sound of two more dives and looked back to see Matt and Gordon following suit.  As I scrambled up the side of the dock,  the mid 70's September air never felt so good.

For half an hour or so we sat chatting and periodically jumping back into the lake.  Eventually, a storm marching up from the southeast caught our attention.

"We should head across the lake to get more water before that thunder storm gets here," Gordon said removing his arm from his knees and pointing toward the dark gray blob.

"How long have you guy's owned this place?" I asked pulling my T-shirt and fleece over my still wet head.

"Well we don't technically own it.  We have a hundred year lease."  Gordon replied, drying his hair with a towel.

"A hundred year lease?  How does that work?  What happens after a 100 years, do you just fork over the house?"

"It's a saying more than an actual time period.  Since the Forest Service owns the land, we lease it from them and built the house.  In effect, its ours.  It's legal jargon," Gordan said as he took a tug on the Mercury's ripcord and squeezed the gas line.  Taking another pull, the engine caught.

"Gotcha."

Pulling away from the dock, we headed towards the far side of the lake to fill up a few jugs with potable water from the alpine inlet. As the small 4-stroke buzzed I looked back at the distancing shoreline and the volcanic peak of Mt. Bachelor.

"One year or one hundred,  I'd take it."

Here are some more links,

Elk Lake (Picasa),

Out of Reception.

Indian Summer

As the sun sank, we made our way towards the train tracks bordering the Washington side of the Columbia River.  The smell of fermenting blackberries brought back memories of my childhood spent running around, face painted and brandishing a wrist rocket, blasting gravel and anything that moved.  Negotiating a vine the diameter of a ping-pong ball, I felt a familiar tug on my shorts and the sharp scrape of a blackberry thorn on my thigh.

"God damn it!" I moaned, grabbing the thorn and flicking it like a popcorn kernel.  "How do you get through this shit?"

"With this plank," Tim said, flipping a 12-foot plank on top of the blackberry bushes and walking across on it.  Following Tim's lead, I quickly made it through the bramble and onto the tracks.

Despite the shortening days,  temperatures in 80's made the steel tracks and black railroad ties feel like late July as we headed west a half mile towards a longtime favorite swimming hole.  Scrambling up the trail, we disregarded a no trespassing sign, emerging onto a basalt outcropping into the Columbia river.

Summer feet.

Splash.

Summer light.

A hydration bladder,  of sorts...

Boulder.

"Man it's getting darker earlier," Tim said crouching on a rock and dripping water from a jump.

"Indian Summer is in full effect," I grinned, pulling my T-shirt over my head and sliding on my flip flops.  "Let's go eat."  We were there for only twenty minutes, but that's what makes a summer swim a summer swim, even in mid September.

Here are some more links:

For daily updates, check out Out of Reception,

Swimming (Picasa).