Hut-to-hut Cross-Country Skiing in Oregon

The First Day

      My friend Holly, and I had noted with relief that two other people had signed up to ski the hut-to-hut Sisters Backcountry cross-country ski trip in the Central Oregon Cascades on the same days we were going. We met Katie and Emily, who had come all the way from Rhode Island for this trip, at Three Creeks Sno-Park, from which we would be shuttled to Dutchman's Flat, on Mt. Bachelor, to begin our trip. We were all glad the others were there. The skiing would be easier with four of us than with two.
      We put on our skis at Dutchman's Flat. The shuttle driver said good-bye and have fun. We took a deep breath, shoved our poles into the snow, and were off on our adventure.
      Almost immediately we were in trouble: ski tracks went up the mountain and, more flatly, ahead. Which way was our route? Knowing we had to gain altitude, we followed the upward tracks, but very quickly Holly and I knew this was too steep for cross-country skiing. Only skiers with skins on their skis could have made these tracks! Later, a close look at the map showed that that route led to the top of Tumalo Mountain. Katie and Emily laughed. "What do we know?" they said. "We thought this was cross-country skiing in Oregon!"

      From there we skied more gradually, and therefore more sensibly, up the mountain (not Tumalo). The snow was deep, the skiing superb, the woods and hills beautiful in their deep snowcoat. 

This picture is actually from the third day, but it shows how beautiful everything was.

We skied for hours, farther and farther from other skiers, deeper and deeper into the wilderness. We took turns breaking trail. We took strenuous herring-bone steps up one hill after another, the last being the steepest, longest, and most exhausting hill I had ever herring-boned up. We side-stepped up other hills. We skied down some difficult slopes that felled everyone but Katie.

The most treacherous downhill, at the end of the first day. I am the closer skier, Emily in front of me.

 As the day wore on, I began to get tired. I fell again. I admitted to being tired. Everyone was tired. When we got to the Happy Valley Nordic Hut (6,489 feet), I sank into a chair with relief. So did everyone else.

Happy Valley Nordic Hut

        Recovery was quick. Soon we were all doing chores – starting the fire in the wood stove, scooping snow into pots to melt for water, laying our sleeping bags on the mattresses in the upper bunks, getting food from the cabinet for our pasta dinner, heating water, setting the table. 

Over dinner we learned a little more about each other: that Emily (27) was a high school science teacher, that Katie (28) was a Physician’s Assistant in an emergency room, that Holly (58), as I already knew, was a certified fiduciary. We played bananagrams, then went to bed early.

      The wind howled all night. Snow fell voluptuously, in sparkling crystals that gleamed in our headlamps when we went to the outhouse during the night.

The Second Day 

       The world was beautiful in its new 12-inch layer of snow. The skiing was superb, beginning with a long downslope with a lapis-lazuli sky to our left, then offering roller-coaster skiing (glide down, glide up, glide down again; glide down, glide up, glide down again), and then a series of switchbacks, zig-zagging turn to turn, turn to turn, up the mountain  At the top we stood on our skis for a few minutes to eat a snack, then pushed off again.

           Our hearts were singing. Everything was so beautiful – 

the various skies, from blue to black to roiling grays; the deep soft snow; the motion of skiing; the forests we skied through; the deep solitude. It was seven or eight gorgeous miles to Lone Wolf Hut (6,451 feet). We arrived in fine spirits and, as before, set to the chores. Dinner that night was rice and beans.

Emily and me. Note the snow melting on the stove.

The Third Day

      Again about a foot of new snow fell overnight.

      I got up early, hoping to start the fire and warm the hut before the others were awake, but Katie was up shortly after me. As I was stoking the fire, she called me to the window, and we watched together as a dark brown mink scooted into view, then leapt away through the snow.

        This day’s ski was mostly downhill, an easy ski for exertion and just as beautiful as the trail on the first two days. The clouds lifted at last to reveal Cascade peaks. We skied through a burned-out forest in which every tree was painted with ice crystals, and the forest, whether close-up as we skied through it or as a panorama at the top of a hill, was utterly beautiful. 

            It was 1:00 when we skied into the Three Creeks Sno-Park, exhilarated and thrilled. It had been a wonderful trip – three days of skiing as the only way to get anywhere; an accomplishment for skill; a challenge for trail-finding; an entrance into an enchanted world of snow and solitude; and a camaraderie of deep, though new, friendships with people who flowed easily into rhythms of work, conversation, and shared physical exertion. We had started the trip as strangers; we had ended as close friends. We hugged each other tightly as we parted.

        “See you next year,” I said to Emily and Katie, and they said, “Yes. We’ll be here.”

At the end of the trail, back at Upper Three Creeks Sno-Park (front to back: Holly, Katie, Emily, me)

A Ring on the Third Finger of the Left Hand

      A diamond, it is said, is a girl's best friend. That's maybe because diamonds are so beautiful but mostly, of course, because of their symbolism.

      Mike didn't do a down-on-the-knees proposal to ask me to marry him; we just gradually started talking about getting married. It seemed a natural step to our growing closeness and fondness for one another. I was just thinking about being married and having a wedding, nothing beyond that, when Mike said something about the ring.

      A ring!? What a wonderful idea. Every engaged woman should have a ring of some kind.

      Wikipedia tells us that a ring has been a symbol of marriage for millennia. Marriage ceremonies among the ancient Egyptians, 3,000 years ago, used rings made of hemp or reeds, although those materials defied the "forever" symbol of the ring, so rings were soon being made of bone, leather, or ivory. The Romans used rings in marriage ceremonies, as did Europeans from ancient to modern times. In colonial America, a prudent and parsimonious Puritan husband-to-be would give his beloved not a frivolous ring but a practical thimble. I'm sure they were beautiful thimbles, but I'm not surprised that the bride-to-be cut off the top of her thimble and wore it as a ring.

      It wasn't a thimble that Mike had in mind. 

      The jeweler for my ring would be my son's best friend from their years together at the Atlanta College of Art, he who had made my son's and daughter-in-law's rings. Mike would participate in designing the ring. I wouldn't know what it would be like, except that Mike would use the diamonds from my mother's engagement ring, which I had inherited. The diamonds and design went off to Dave Giulietti, the jeweler, and the wait began.

      At first I thought maybe I would get the ring for Christmas, but Mike told me Dave was too busy with other orders to finish mine before Christmas. Christmas came and went, and the time dragged on. I began to hint that it would be nice to get the ring enough ahead of the wedding that I would have fun showing it off. 

      I wasn't too surprised, then, that before Mike and I went out for dinner on Valentine's Day, he sat down next to me, said something breezy about really meaning this thing about getting married, and gave me a little square box. In it was a beautiful and unusual engagement ring, with diamonds in a large circle of gold on an intricately engraved band. It throws darts of color with the slightest movement. I am a happy fiancée, and an official one, and I am loving showing off my meaningful diamond ring.

     

 

Love and Marriage

      I always thought I would get married. That's what girls did when they grew up. I absorbed that truth, through my parents, school, fairy tales, children's books – everywhere there was the unchallenged assumption that girls got married when they grew up.

      There wasn't a whole lot of emphasis, at Vanderbilt University, on education leading to a career, but what there was was directed only to the male students. The women, as everyone knew, didn't need a career. They were just going to get married, anyway. 

      During the hippy years the assumption was that no one, or few of us, anyway, would get married. Some hippies had wild and wonderful weddings (whether celebrating a legal marriage or not is another question). Marriage was something the state set up, a legal thing that had nothing to do with our love relationships. We could fall in love, live together, have families, be committed without having to get married. We were philosophically against marriage. Certainly that was the thinking of my – well, one of the problems with not getting married was not having a proper word for our married-style relationships. He and I were as though married. We just didn't have the official paper proving it.

      Then, as happens in a lot of marriages, things fell apart. This dissolution was deeply disturbing to me As much as marriage was a given while I was growing up, "divorce" was a nonentity. There was no such thing; once married, one stayed married. But this, too, was a concept quickly dissolving in the social milieu of the day. (Three of my four siblings had second marriages.) My married relationship had been a deep commitment; breaking up was a deep loss. 

      When I finally came out of the grieving period and realized that I was single, I thought, "I'll be dadgum if I'm going to live my life as though it has a hole in it for some man to fill up."

      And, in fact, I have lived a very full, rich life. Maybe, I thought with chagrin years into singlehood, I hadn't left room for a husband in my life.

      Still, I always thought I would get married. I thought that a good man would come along whom I loved, and we would join our lives and be a married couple. Until I hit menopause. Then, suddenly, it occurred to me that maybe I wasn't going to get married, after all. Maybe the time had passed. That was a surprise, but it didn't trouble me. I was living a good life and a happy one. My life was proof that one didn't have to be married to be happy. I became kind of proud of my single status and its meaningfulness to other single women. I liked skewing the statistics.

        But life is full of surprises. 

      This spring, two months before my 75th birthday, I am getting married. It wasn't a matter of time, after all. It was a matter of meeting the right man. I have found him, I love him, and, reader, I am marrying him.

      

When Winter Weather Wears You Down

      I wouldn't say I'm exactly envious of you if you live in the coldest parts of the country this year, but almost. I like cold weather, and I'm glad to say we're at last getting some here in southern Oregon. 

      I can remember some Oregon winters that were very winterish indeed, and I can sympathize with you, if your inner child is becoming peevish and petulant and you feel yourself slipping into winter doldrums. But hold on! Don't give in! Arm yourself with these winter survival tips:

      (1) Refuse to succumb to the dominant paradigm that gray equals gloom. Make a study of the sky, and you'll find a plethora of variations on gray clouds. They're striped and brindled, splotched and rippled, distinctly layered or seamlessly smeared in a watercolor wash, white to dark and a thousand shades in between. Find new words for gray – platinum, pearl, steel, taupe, but stay away from dirty words like ash, charcoal, and smoke.

      (2) Never elevate your hopes. Just because you see stars at 9:00 pm doesn't mean you'll see sunshine tomorrow. Just because the eastern sky is clear at 8:00 in the morning doesn't mean those sweeping gray clouds from the south won't obliterate the blue by noon. Each time you leave survival mode, you are in danger of slipping deeper into doldrums, and with each slip you'll have a harder time regaining good humor. Take any slice of pale blue sky, any glimpse of well-focused moon as a gift. Savor it, enjoy it, and remind your inner child that it's not polite to ask for more than is given.

      (3) Make the indoors bright and cheerful. Keep the house clean; depression has no better friend than disorder and diet. Indulge the senses. Simmer luscious stews on top of the stove, and bake often not only because baking emits good smells and leads to pleased palates, but also because a hot oven warms the house the way a good hug warms the heart.

      (4) Use escape items. Books or movies can lift you out of foul weather, whereas other escapes don't so much remove you from winter as remove winter from your spirit. You can't be glum if you're making notecards for a friend, for instance, or if you've lost yourself in working out the intricacies of a Bach sarabande on the guitar. You could be immersed for hours, well out of reach of the wet enstranglement of winter, but it's also a delicious feeling to return to the moment, listen to the tap-dance on the roof, and be glad you're here, now, in this Oregon (in my case), in this winter.

      (5) Enjoy it! Walk in it; notice its details. Rain shimmers as it drones down. The raindrum plays polyrhythms on leaves, roof, earth. Mists veil and then reveal mountains. Little round clouds are nosed about by hummocks like balls tossed by seals. Relish the sponginess of the earth as you walk. Winter is full of sensualities. Don't miss them!

      (6) Keep heart. Just as surely as the planet turns around the sun, winter turns to spring. It has never been otherwise.