Memoirous

Always, before any trip, there is a lot of emotional tension. Doubts. Will I be able to do this? What will I forget to bring!? If only I knew. But, that’s the thing about trips—we get to experience things for the first time—and we don’t know until we start. That’s how it was, once again, with this last ride I did. I had to get up and out early to catch the Lane Link shuttle from Eugene to Florence. I was there in front of the Chase bank to meet it with my $5. The guy loaded my bike in front and off we went. It’s only a 2-hour drive, but not bathrooms on the shuttle, so I couldn’t think of tea or hydrating before getting on the bike as much as I’d like to. I was deposited in the Old Town part of Florence, a 2 ½ block of older wooden buildings where there are restaurants and galleries, Cute, but for later when I got back. It started off easy. I don’t think I needed to go down to my climbing gear for the first 10 miles. I stopped at a day-use site along the National Oregon Dunes Sho...

This class has been one of the best things ever! And, I’ve done a lot of conferences and workshops.  https://www.storystudiochicago.org/advanced-writing-programs-at-storystudio-chicago/novel-in-a-year-ya-middle-grade-with-jame-klise/ I think it was the right things at the right time. First applying in a pandemic and then getting the grant from the city of Chicago. Then, Story Studio threw in a scholarship, making the whole thing obtainable. I, again, am taking this one payment at a time. But, the thing that has been so helpful is the peer workshoppers themselves. They are sooo supportive. We are actually a community, though remote. We do daily meetups online via Zoom to write together. This gets me out of bed in the a.m. (a two-hour time difference between Pacific and Central time) and accountable. If even just to chat for 15 minutes before making tea and getting started, I can check in and not feel so alone. Writing is a solitary task. There’s a quote attributed to Willia...

Making plans, change is in the air Ever since my daughter and her family, the whole reason I’m here in Eugene, moved away, I’ve been trying to decide my next move. It’s hard. I love it out here. The weather, my job, my living situation. The sense of feeling vital and necessary. I hate to leave it. But, yet, I feel as if I’m living a half-life, missing my loved ones. So I’m making lists and figuring out my next step. That’s it, steps. I don’t have the whole map. Not yet. I am just beginning, one foot in front of another. As many of you know, before moving out here, in a van going to the airport with my suitcase, pulling out of the parking space my friend spotted a sign. A hawk on a fence post .  A sign of what I wasn’t sure. I’m looking for signs. My Portland, OR friend invited me to a womans’ conference, Unveiled, taking place at Cascades Camp and Conference Center, Yelm, Washington. My plan is to bus up to Seattle to visit a friend and then hitch a ride to the retr...

Summer is half over and I’ve begun to make lists. Next week I’ll take the Lane Link shuttle from Eugene to Florence and cycled down the coast to Coos Bay, to Sunset Park where I’ll camp for a couple of night before heading back to Florence. Later I want to shuttle again for a day trip to Hecata Lighthouse. I’m also doing a few days of childcare outside of my regular work schedule at Arriving By Bike. But—oh! the garden! The sunflower is 9 feet high. That part in the Old Testament where Jonah sits under a bush or whatever: Now the LORD God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. I can imagine it now. It might have been a thick-stalked sunflower! I must admit I was a naysayer or naythinker at first. My roommate’s efforts all seemed so flimsy. I mean the seedlings were SMALL. So fragile. Now the kale is out of control. The tomato pants that I t...

  Summer, even the word sounds lazy, effortless. Green, running on forever and ever. Shimmering in late afternoon heat, long shadows, slants of light. Brilliant endlessly blue skies. A whole day before you, to swim in your own thoughts, watch the sunflower climb heavenward. Where does the earth end and the temple begin . . . sunflower

I have fallen two times since being in Eugene. I’m age 62 so this is no small thing. The absolute terror, checking if bones have broken, did I lose conscious. Embarassment at my own stupidity, frailty, mortality. Should I install grab bars, wear a helmet when going out, use a walker? I’m not there yet. Both instances involved running. I had just gotten my vaccine and was feeling invincible; I went on a run to celebrate I’d made it through a plague year. I’d made it! Then, bam! I was paying no attention to my feet and the sidewalk. My toe had caught some broken pavement and, not being at all aware, my head slammed onto the ground like a bouncing ball. No one was around, but it must have been hard—all the neighborhood dogs started barking. Dazed, I quickly got up and looked around. Everything seemed all there, so I took off. Later I had a bulging blue/green bruise ripening on my forehead. I looked like a domestic abuse victim. Then a few weeks ago I had a terrific run. I’ve taken...

For All Who Hunger Emily M.D. Scott Convergent, New York, 2020 In an earlier post I mentioned that we’re being allowed back into the library to browse the stacks. Since I’m unfamiliar with the library, as I moved here during the pandemic and it was closed, I had no idea where to start. Luckily on the first floor is a NEW section. Of course, there was the torrid romances with their covers ALL IN THE SAME COLOR PALETTE. Sheesh! There was also some exciting new non-fiction and then a little tiny section for religion or self-help/improvement. And, since this is Eugene OR, the section included several titles dedicated to goddess and witches/worship. So it was a broad swath of everything. Nestled in here was a title that caught my eye: For All Who Hunger: Searching for Communion in a Shattered World by Emily M.D. Scott. I liked her back profile picture. Rev. Scott founded what came to be called Dinner Church. Based essentially on congregants sharing a meal together. She began with a small id...

Up till now we were in the forest, under huge fir trees and waterfalls. As we got started the next day there was more open road and a divided road with . . . signs! We actually had a solid idea of where to go next. Leading us to Crater Lake. Here we were in the high Cascades, snow-capped peaks and  coat-weather, or else heavy sweatshirts. We stopped first to take pictures of Eagle Rock and a pumice desert, all relics of or evidence of the volcanic activity that formed this area. We made it to the rim of Crater Lake—a big hole blasted by volcanic explosion and filled in by numerous seasons of rainfall—the deepest in the United States at a depth of 1,949 feet. We crossed snow banks to get to photo points. I’m not even going to bother describing the color of the water. I will never see that color again in nature—so deep, so blue, so purple, so startling brilliant. A sapphire comes the closest, but still not hitting the mark. Instead of riding our bikes around the lake, our origin...

We got up early and struck the campsite. We were actually finishing breakfast when the first drops fell. No problema, we hopped in the car and drove (the wrong way at first) down the road, looking for Toketee Falls. Toketee Falls is one of the most famous waterfalls in all of Oregon, renowned far and wide for the graceful columnar basalt formation framing the two-stepped falls. The North Umpqua River has carved a sinuous gorge out of the lava flow, resulting in a waterfall of 113 feet in height - a 28 foot upper tier which plunges into a pool flanked by a deep alcove, followed by an 85 foot plunge into a large pool. Despite the 200 steps to get to it, it was an EASY hike. Again the rain was not so bad. Then we went looking for Umpqua Hot Springs in the area. This again was difficult as we were clueless. Eventually we found a trailhead (Hindsight later would tell us we could drive closer to the Springs and park for a $5 fee, Next time.) and began a 2-mile hike through thick forest and d...

The next morning after waking up to spotty sunshine was to dry out the tent and take stock of where we were. We had no map, data, or GPS. The best could do was ping the phone and see the dot of our car moving on an unnamed road. As I was spreading my rain fly out on the middle of the tiny asphalt forest road a cyclist came by. She lived literally at the boundary of the national forest and knew the roads well. We snapped a pic of her map with our phone and she gave us some advice for that day’s travel. Stay on the paved roads. Yes, we thought. We can do this. We stopped at Parker Falls for a quick hike and were on our way in search of the illustrious paved road. This again turned out to be a bit of a misnomer. What started out as a 50 mph roadway again narrowed as we climbed higher. And higher, and higher. We crossed rock fields from slides and S-curves with no guard rails on the sides. We heard the soft whoosh wind makes in mountains and the scream of some raptor gliding by. We wer...

My Camping Trip in the Umpqua Forest/High Cascades   Now, let me first remind my readers—both of you—I get lost, a lot. But this trip was definitely off the map from my normal getting lost. Mainly because we didn’t even have a map. At least not at first. I had a friend come out from Chicago for a week and we hatched a plan to go car camping. A former workmate at the bike shop loaned us his car. A white Volvo that looked great parked in a driveway, but awfully small tootling down forest roads beneath a canopy of giant cedars and spruces. But, I’ll get to that in a moment. Suffice it to say, my friend wasn’t much better with directions. After riding bikes around Lake Dorena and snapping photos at the 11 or so covered bridges along the route, we loaded the bikes up and rode into the Umpqua National Forest, where blue skies turned into patchwork beneath the thick foliage. I was surprised that the sun set at 7 instead of 9 or 10 at night. But, I’ll get to that. We traveled t...