And Then It Snowed

     It snowed. And then it snowed and snowed and snowed. When it stopped, the earth was white with two feet of snow and the tree limbs bowed low with heavy snow burdens. Then it snowed again, another six inches or more. 

The first snowfall, before it got deep

    I was ecstatic.

    The electricity went out—no internet, no cell service, no email, no cookstove. The outdoor shower had frozen, but the water was still running, so I could shower indoors, in my beautiful bathroom.

I filled the bathtub with water in case the holding tank emptied. The landline phone had gone dead earlier but was working now. The house would stay warm with my wood-burning stove. I had already driven my car the quarter-mile downhill distance to the paved road. I was comfortably snowed in.

   I knew, from experience, that the snowplow would have just about buried the car, which was parked by the side of the road, so I was anxious to dig it out while the snow was still soft, before it froze. So, on the first day of the two-foot snow, I decided that that would be the day's task.

    First, though, I should make sure the snow was skiable. 

    I put my skis on at the back door, then skied down my driveway. My skis sank deep into the soft snow with each step. I didn't want to stop. I skied through the woods to an old logging road, then on up the mountain. It was tough going, breaking trail through such deep snow. I struggled up the mountain till the road flattened, and then I still didn't want to stop. I kept on going, up and up, till finally I came to my senses. The day's task was to dig the car out. I ought to go home.

    Even downhill, even in my tracks, I had to push through snow, so it was still slow going. By the time I got home, I had been gone three hours. I ate a hurried lunch, grabbed the car keys, and tied a shovel to my pack, fastening it securely. Then I put on my skis and started down the road, with the shovel sticking two feet above my head.

    I was skiing downhill on fairly steep hills, but the deep snow kept me from going too fast. When I saw a small tree ahead of me, bowed down over the road by the snow, I stopped for assessment. I could ski around it on the far side, or it looked like I could ski under it, too, maybe without even ducking my head. I decided to ski under it.

    I forgot about the shovel.

    Thunk! The shovel hit the tree trunk, and down I went, as in a slapstick comedy.

    I struggled to standing, with my pack and its shovel still on my back, picked up my hat, dusted off the snow, then skied on down the hill to the road, where, as suspected, my car was snowed in. 

    Just as I started to dig out the car, a big pick-up drove past, going down the mountain. The driver stopped to tell me he would give me a hand when he came back up the road, after picking up his stepson. 

    Then the snowplow came up the road. Seeing what I was doing, the driver swung the plow as close as he could to my car and pulled away about half of what I would have to dig. I waved a cheerful thank-you. A few minutes later he came back and swiped a whole patch of snow away from the front of the car. Way helpful!

    Next the postman came by. He stopped and opened the back door of his car, saying, "I've got a package for you." He handed me my package and drove on up the road.

    That was all I saw of other people for a couple of hours. I dug and dug and dug at the snow, carrying it by the shovelful to dump in the woods. I pulled snow away from the tires. I pulled it away from the side of the car. I shoveled and shoveled and shoveled, and just as I was almost done, the man in the pickup drove by again. His stepson jumped out, grabbed the shovel, and finished the job for me. By this time I was glad enough to stand around and chat with him while he worked. His name was Brennan. He had moved here from Los Angeles last July, with his wife and child. They live in a small house just across the road. 

    "If you ever need help," he said as he handed the shovel back to me, the job done, "just knock on my door."

    I left the shovel in the car, put my pack, with my package in it, on my back, and skied up the hill, ducking easily under the tree, thinking how fortunate I am to have such kind neighbors. 

    I cannot tell you how tired I was when I got home. Physically beat. Unable to take a long hot bath, I had the last of the eggnog and brandy instead. I heated dinner on top of the wood-burning stove, then ate by candlelight. Later, as I was walking up the stairs to the bedroom, carrying a flickering candle in its brass candlestick holder like a character out of Dickens, I thought what a good day it had been.

Skiing the Layton Ditch trail from my house the next day

    

    

'Twas the Night (or Two) before Christmas

     I have been cooking all morning, making a Moroccan style beef short rib tagine, lemon spinach couscous salad, and orange-chocolate pot de creme. That, along with the pear-fennel soup I made last night, was the menu for Christmas dinner.

    I was also going to make a chocolate angel food cake to take to the dinner I was invited to for Christmas Eve, following the family hike I was also invited to join.

    My son and his father and stepmother were going to be here on Christmas Day to share the dinner with me, so a few days ago, when the snow had almost but not quite melted, I went out with my bow saw to look for a Christmas tree. The one I found looked pretty scrawny when I got it home, about eight feet tall but delicately limbed, to say the least. There were so few branches I thought I wouldn't be able to get all my ornaments on it. Now, however, fully decorated, it must surely be one of the best Christmas trees ever. (My mother, every Christmas: "It's the best tree ever!")

It is slender, so it doesn't take up a lot of room. I don't knock ornaments and tinsel off branches when I go to the bathroom, and I don't have branches dangling over my shoulder when I sit on the couch. It looks lusciously decorated, with all my ornaments—yes, I used them all—draped from every possible branch.

    And then, after all that, after the cooking and the decorating and the buying of spirits and gifts, no one will be here to celebrate with me. I will not make the chocolate angel food cake because I won't be joining the other family on Christmas Eve. It's all because it'll be a white Christmas for me in my little house on the mountain.

    Snow is predicted, at this altitude, practically non-stop, starting at 5:00 this afternoon (Thursday). All plans have crumbled. Ela is not coming down from Vashon. Dan and Tracy wouldn't be able to get up my road so won't be here, either. The Christmas Eve plans with friends have been canceled.

    Instead, I will drink eggnog with Kahlua in front of a cheerful fire in the stove. I will eat my good dinner and open my gifts. I will do Zoom calls with my family. And, if predictions hold true, I will watch snow fall, hour after hour, all day long. I will watch the snow fall for days. I will watch it pile up in great heaps of white loveliness. I will take the car the half-mile down the road to the paved road, which stays plowed, then will walk back up the road in the snow. Maybe, as it keeps snowing, I will be able to put on my skis and ski up the mountain. I will miss the planned and eagerly anticipated celebration, but there are worse things than being snowbound for Christmas.

It Was the Bear's Fault

     "This is the bear's fault," I thought as I drove home Monday night, after dark and through snow.

    I had left home in a light and intermittent snowfall in plenty of time to have snow tires put on my car and then to do a few quick errands before heading home. I should have been home well before dark. But when I got back in the car after the final errand and saw that the "low tire" signal had come on, I headed right back to Les Schwab.

    The receptionist thought it was just a matter of turning the light off and called someone right away. The store was busy. It was a long wait. Finally a technician came in, squatted in front of my chair, and said, sympathetically, "One of your tires has a slash in it. We would think it had been done with a knife except that it's on the inside of the tire."

    "Ah," I thought. "The bear."

    Last spring I left my snow tires on the inside of the car port (roof but no sides), leaning against one of the posts. One day last summer I was puzzled to find one of those tires outside the car port, leaning against the same pole. The other three tires were still propped against the pole on the inside of the car port. There was no shredded plastic. Very mysterious.

    The only thing I could figure was that a bear had moved it, though I couldn't understand why he would do that. Now, faced with more substantial evidence, I envisioned the scene again. Curious about the bright yellow something that was my tire inside the plastic bag, he must have picked it up, slashing the tire with a claw as he lifted it to his nose. Then, deciding it wasn't edible, he pivoted and dropped it. It happened to land upright, leaning against the pole. The last piece of evidence was a slight rip in the plastic I had noticed when I put the tire in the car. Just a small hole. Just big enough for a claw.

    I had to buy two new tires, of course, because these days, if you ruin one tire you have to buy its mate, too. 

    I made it home through the dark and the snow, stopping halfway up the hill to clear the road of branches dragged down by the snow, using the headlights for light, but I was still grumbling at the bear. We get along pretty well, in general, but this time I think he owes me about $300 for the tires.

    

Migrating Birds in Autumn

Like wind made visible
a small dark cloud swirls above trees
swoops and swings like a kite
then suddenly splinters like pixels on a computer screen
uncoalescing.
A wave that on the screen dissolves an image
into thousands of unrecognizable bits
here splinters it into recognizability 
of birds. 

The dots have lost cohesion.

Each flies aimlessly, confusedly.

Suddenly the flock implodes again

into a dense black swooshing host

a calligrapher's flourish

a skier's rhythm on downhill turns

a melody's graceful loops, molto vivace.

Suddenly the unity explodes again.

All the birds become each bird

finding a perch in an autumn tree.

I thought the show had ended then

and was ready to go on my way

when a gust of wind flushed

a silhouette of birds into a skyward flutter

and a flutter of leaves earthward wending:

mirror images twinkling in the morning light

sprinkling the air with beauty

before it was empty again.

Amtrak Changes the Route

     I am so mad at Amtrak!

    For many years I have taken the train between Eugene, Oregon, and Tacoma, Washington, where I get on a ferry for Vashon Island to visit my son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter. I loved that ride, which crossed grand rivers and traveled through marshlands and woodlands after it left Portland, and then—the best part—traveled along the Puget Sound, with islands offshore, ferries chugging through the water, and, when the weather was fine, a view of snow-topped Olympic Mountains across the sea. When the train passed boathouses and houseboats, I imagined what living on water would be like. When it went past waterfront parks, I watched people walking along the shore and children playing on swings, water birds stalking along beaches, water softly lapping not far from the train tracks. Then the beautiful, long, graceful Narrows Bridge arched into view, with its double span, one green, one gray. After that, vision shut down in the dark tunnel just before the train arrived at the Tacoma station.

    I always made sure to sit on the left side of the train, the water side. I loved that journey.

    Once on the way back from Tacoma, after the train had left the Puget Sound and was traveling through marshes and woods, one of the conductors came on the intercom to apologize for our having stopped to let a freight train pass. Then he started reminiscing. He had wanted to work for Amtrak ever since he was a kid, he said, and watched the train go past. He had been on this train for forty years. He had seen cougars and bears and foxes in these woods. Eagles. Egrets. Ever since then, I have looked and looked for that quick glimpse of an animal from the train window, but I have never been so lucky.

    And then—dumb Amtrak! Stupid, unfeeling, efficiency-blinded Amtrak changed the route! The train no longer goes along the sound. There is no more expanse of water to gaze at, snow-peaked mountains to contemplate, lapping waves to meditate on, leisurely walkers to watch in the waterfront parks. The route is all inland now. Instead of seas and rivers and parks, it passes industrial ugliness, trashy yards, urban clutter. 

    I am devastated.

    Amtrak has turned a spiritually uplifting experience into mere transportation. Just get there. Never mind the loss.

    I would forgive Amtrak, I think, if the new route were made for environmental reasons—to preserve the habitat for those animals the conductor had seen. Or for social justice reasons or safety reasons. But the point was speed. The reasons were economics and efficiency. 

    Bad, bad choice! 

    Who cares if it's a faster route? Who cares if we no longer have to wait for a freight train to pass? How did Amtrak weigh efficiency and speed against beauty and solace? How do they measure satisfaction from some passengers against a great sense of loss from others? Did they ask us? How did they know we would be glad to make the sacrifice of scenery for speed? 

    We so much need to slow down and immerse ourselves in beauty. Amtrak gave us that opportunity. Now they, too, have succumbed to get there-get there-get there. 

    I am sorry for the people who made this decision. They have no soul. And I am sorry for those of us who have lost a beautiful ride in this beautiful country that not enough of us see enough of, anyway.

     

Earthy Artifice of Autumn

     It's easy to remember, every spring, how beautiful the woods can be with the colorful glory of wildflowers under the trees and in the meadows. But I forget, every autumn, that while alders and maples hog the spotlight with their fiery yellows and reds overhead, deep on the dark forest floor another kind of flora is pushing up through mud and leaf mold to spot the earth with color. Mushrooms are autumn's answer to spring's wildflowers.

    Whereas spring bursts into bloom with neon intensity, mushrooms take hues more appropriate to the woods and to the closing days of autumn—cantaloupe, mauve, leaf-brown, pumpkin—but they are no less startling for having more subtlety. And, anyway, sometimes they aren't so subtle. Slick, white mushrooms are such a contrast with the black soil of their birthing bed they elicit exclamations equal to those emitted at the sight of a field of lupine at the base of a snow-capped mountain.

An amanita, red with white spots, round as a dessert plate; those large, yellow, spongy-looking mushrooms; the little brown ones running around on the ground like a flock of baby birds—purple mushrooms, blue ones, orange ones—the hues are the same names as those we give to wildflowers and maple leaves, but the chroma is in keeping with autumn: earth-toned, tinged with melancholy, akin to decaying leaves and clouded skies. Beauty of a different kind.

    A walk through the woods in November reveals a marvel of variety: curly edges, concave cups, perfect circles, smooth and shiny tops, scabby tops, frilly fans. How did mushrooms manage to find such different ways to present themselves? I kneel to pay homage to the strength of a mushroom as it shoulders its way through dirt, pushing aside rocks and roots, ignoring vines that want to hold it back. Here they come! The mushrooms! Thrusting up from the underworld, full-formed—no need for roots to dig in and leaves to photosynthesize. Here they are! The mushrooms!

Under a Roof of Birds

    I was walking through the woods last week when I thought I saw a movement ahead of me. I stopped and peered through the trees. But wasn't that a blackened tree stump I thought had moved? I was walking through a part of the forest that had been underburned a few years ago, so burned stumps and logs are common. Then the blackened tree stump jumped up and ran up a tree—a bear cub, in the exact place I had seen him and his mom and twin sister a few weeks ago.
    "It's all right," I called. "Don't worry. I'll take another trail. Have a good day," and I turned around and walked a different direction.

    After a short walk I had cause to thank the bear cub for turning me in a different direction because on that new trail I was suddenly under a roof of birds, twittering, chattering, chirping in the trees over my head. The musical commotion held me captive. The birds weren't singing and whistling; they weren't making melodies. They were telling stories, and I was privy to their gossip. From time to time one would flit to a perch in a different tree. Another would flutter to another perch, then another bird to another tree. They chattered like girls at the Coco-Cola parties of my teenhood. Occasionally the rasping call from a distant crow or Stellar jay would add perspective to the aural experience—outside the room of birds—but nothing disturbed the gorgeous color of sound that saturated the air around me. It was like standing under a rainbow.

    Suddenly, with no discernible provocation and with a rush so loud it startled me, the whole flock whooshed out of the trees and flew northward. I was left with the silence of the forest again. 

    What a privilege it is to be in such a world. 

When the Trees Turn Gold

Suzanne Simard tells us that the Mother Tree cares for her offspring,nurturing them, feeding them, warning them. It sounds a lot like love, so it's hard not to credit the trees with other emotions, too. It's hard not to think that the trees in Southern Oregon have expressed their joy at rain and a nip of cold this autumn by bursting into color.

Don't you, when you are overjoyed at something, burst into song? Maybe bursting into color is the equivalent response to joy from the maples and oaks of southern Oregon. And if that's the case, we might see that the trees are particularly happy for all the wonderful rain that has fallen in the last two weeks, because the maples have been a richer, deeper yellow than ever,

and the dogwoods, usually so demure in their pinks, have blushed almost red,

and the scrub oaks have grown exuberant in bronze, yellow, scarlet,burnt orange, and maroon, all in one tree.

Vine maples also go wild with different hues in one tree and even on one leaf.

You probably think this is a case of psychological transference, that because I am full of joy at the abundance of color in the maples, oaks, and dogwoods this autumn, to say nothing of being overjoyed at the rain itself, I transfer that joy onto the sentient trees. But I assure you it is the other way around, that walking under the maples transfers joy to me. Like sending nutrients to their offspring through mycorrhiza, the trees send their autumnal joy to me through the air we share and that, indeed, they so abundantly provide.

(Another expression of joy in the mountains this autumn.)

Freedom

 I came away from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's production of Fannie (see last week's post) with mixed feelings. Of course, I was moved by the story of the civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer—how much she suffered for her work, how brave she was to face hatred and bigotry in order to register black people to vote and even to run for office herself. That she was doing what she was doing in the name of freedom for black people was a great tribute to the concept of freedom. 

    But these days the word disturbs me. It is easy to see what it means if people are enslaved. It isn't hard to understand "freedom" in terms of Jim Crow South. What I don't understand is people who march today demanding "freedom," meaning "You can't make me wear a mask." In France people made the outrageous analogy between having to wear masks, and Nazis making Jews wear a yellow star. In some places in this country, people are crying out that a requirement to be vaccinated in order to work or go to school is an infringement on their freedom.

    In a way that's true—in the same way that there is a law that we have to drive on the right side of the road, for instance. Why can't I drive anywhere on the road I want to? Because it is dangerous for other people. Likewise, there is a danger to others for those who won't get vaccinated and yet want to interact in large groups. It is not reasonable to let people be free to do as they like in public places if what they are doing could endanger others. There are certainly some "freedoms" we are willing to give up in order to have a safe society. "Freedom"finds its footing only in relation to other entities. 

    I have just finished reading The Mother Tree, by Suzanne Simard, and, before that, David McCullough's biography of John Adams, making, with Fannie, a tripod of concepts of freedom for me to contemplate. That John Adams fought for our freedom from English tyranny is such a truism of history by now that we have lost the nuances of the arguments—people still held as slaves, the international relations, the nasty political battles. Suzanne Simard wants us to understand that trees are sentient, caring beings, as she has proven in her meticulous scientific studies. Shouldn't we, then, curtail our "freedom" to slaughter trees by the thousands? As morally responsible people, we find our freedom to act as we please hemmed in on all sides. For us all to live well, we must be willing to share our freedoms and bear their reasonable restrictions.

At the Theater Again

     The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in Ashland, Oregon, an hour's drive from my house, is famous for outstanding productions, not only of Shakespeare but of plays throughout the ages. I have seen some stunning productions at OSF and some unforgettable scenes.
    Then COVID hit, and even before COVID, smokey summers in recent years meant one cancellation after another of performances in the outdoor theater.  OSF took a nose dive. They quickly moved to Zoom presentations and other types of online performance, but it isn't the same. There is no substitute for live theater. 
    So I was excited to hear that OSF was producing Fannie this summer, in the Elizabethan (outdoor) theater. I bought a ticket for an October performance, hoping to escape smoke and made confident by OSF's COVID protocols: show proof of vaccination, wear a mask throughout the show, and sit (in your pod) distanced from other attendees. 
    Fannie is a one-woman show about Fannie Lou Hamer, the brave civil rights activist who defied Jim Crow to work towards voting rights for black people. Greta Oglesby gave an astonishing performance, and the play itself was excellent, but it made me sad to watch it, thinking that in spite of what has changed in Mississippi since Fannie's days, bigotry and voter suppression still exist, and thinking about the changes COVID and climate change have wrought on our own way of life. OSF's changed circumstances were painfully evident: the theater was only two-thirds full because of the spaced-out seating; this play had only one actor, lasted only an hour and a half, had minimal sets with no scenery changes, and offered no program—obviously a production on a greatly reduced budget. 

    Hope resurged, though, as I drove home—hope that we could overcome a racist society as long as OSF can give its audiences such material, hope that we can overcome the despair of our life under the domination of COVID, hope that this abbreviated season at OSF is the beginning of a grand comeback of live theater, however slowly it might have to inch forward.

Mt. McLoughlin One Day, Grayback the Next

     Last Saturday at 8:40 am my friend Greg Stanko and I started up the five-mile trail to the top of Mt. McLoughlin, Medford's own Cascades peak. We would be ascending 4000 feet to the 9,459-foot summit.

    This balmy autumn day contrasted starkly with our attempt, two weeks earlier, when snow turned us back at about 8000 feet. Now, we couldn't have chosen a better day. I was in high spirits. I have lived in the Rogue Valley for almost half a century, and this would be my first time on top of McLoughlin.

    If I got there. I began to doubt that assumption as I climbed higher. After 3.2 miles, marked in white chalk on a rock, the trail turned nastily steep, and oh, my God! the rocks! I had been told the top part of the climb was boulder hopping, but that's not what it was. I've done boulder hopping. This was not jumping or hopping over big boulders but lugging the body up steep rocks, heaving the unwilling, heavy body from one rock up to the next one. Steep, on this trail, is steep.

Greg and me, on the ascent

    I began to have second thoughts about climbing Mt. McLoughlin on my ninetieth birthday.

    Then the trail turned not only steep but slippery with soil that was really only pulverized rock. Each step meant a slide backwards half that length.

The trail to the summit is up the edge on the right.

The altitude was affecting my breathing. On I slogged—or, rather, pulled and slipped and struggled. Greg, ahead of me, didn't seem to be having any difficulty. I envied him his long legs.

    And then we were on the top.

On top of Mt. McLoughlin

All the difficulty vanished, leaving only exhilaration. The view was expansive: Mt. Shasta white with snow, the Siskiyou Mountains, Mt. Thielsen sticking its pointed finger into the sky, Mt. Scot looming over an unseen Crater Lake—and the beautiful lakes below us: Fish Lake, Lake of the Woods, Fourmile Lake—my skiing country. Remnants of the snowfall that had turned us back two weeks earlier streaked down the sides of the peak below us.

    We were on the top for about an hour, along with about two dozen young people and three dogs. Everyone said, "What a beautiful day it is!"

    The way down went faster than the way up because every sliding step took us towards our goal rather than away from it. However, the slippery soil, especially on top of steeply slanted rocks, was so treacherous I fell several times. Even Greg went down a time or two. Finally we were on more solid and less steep ground, then under the trees again, where the walking should have been easier except by this time my feet were hurting so badly all I could think about was Greg's truck at the trailhead. A little over eight hours after we started, I sat down at a picnic table at the trailhead, took off my boots, and hobbled to the truck. 

    Greg very kindly said he thought that was one of the hardest climbs he's done—and he has been trekking in Nepal and has climbed Mt. Shasta and spent the night on top of Thielsen. He also kindly said we had made good time. It's true that all those people who had passed us on the trail were a lot younger, including the young man who was running this trail. 

    An Epsom salts bath when I got home revived my sore thighs and aching feet, but was I really going to hike up Grayback Mountain with Margaret Perrow tomorrow? What was I thinking, to have made those plans?

    But the next day I felt fine, walking felt normal, and the weather was again gorgeous so, sure, why not climb Grayback the day after climbing McLoughlin? 

    I know this trail well, so I was prepared for its steep beginnings. My legs were a little wobbly, but that soon wore off. At Windy Gap, we made our way off-trail up the spine of the mountain, through woods, then over rocks, kind of like clambering over rocks on Mt. McLoughlin except not as steep. My feet and thighs were doing fine. Three hours from the trailhead, we were sitting on top of Grayback Mountain, higher, at 7048 feet, than we could be on any mountain east of the Mississippi.

On top of Grayback. Mt. McLoughlin is the point on the horizon to my right.

Margaret at the summit

    We could see across the valley to the Cascade Range: Mt. Shasta, Lassen Peak, and, pointing into the horizon above the valley, Mt. McLoughlin. Yesterday, I thought, I was there. 

    Turning around, we were looking at the Siskiyous, plowing from the west into the Cascades at the point called the Klamath Knot. 

The Siskiyou Crest. Photo by Margaret Perrow.    

    It was a glorious two days. I wore out my boots, but my feet have completely recovered. I love my mountains. Maybe I'll do a repeat for my ninetieth birthday, after all.

A Teacher's Reward

    In early August I got a phone call from a former student, Karina, whom I had taught not in my college classes but in a multi-age class at an alternative school in the Applegate in the 1980s.

Karina (center) and me in clothes we had made and with 
masks and cloths we had printed for a unit on Africa.

Now she is a grown woman, of course, with her own marriage and children and a home in Trinidad, California.

    Karina had read my book of poems about Mike (From Friend to Wife to Widow: Six Brief Years) and liked it so much she just picked up the phone and called me, regardless of our not having been in touch for decades. I was so glad to hear from her! We talked for a long time, about Mike and about her son, who had died earlier that same year. Karina urged me to visit her in Trinidad.

    So I did.

    I met her daughter, Olivia, who is my granddaughter's age. (Her husband wasn't home.) We did some hikes together and she cooked some great meals and we talked and shared stories and laughed about the past, and it was all so much fun she called her sister, Laurel, after I had left to tell her about it. 

    Laurel had been my student, too.

Laurel is in the center. 1981

She had been in many of the plays I wrote and produced with the Applegate Youth Theater. She lives in Portland now. She was enchanted with Karina's tales of our time together and told Karina she would love for me to visit her, too.

    So, last week, I did.

    Laurel met me at the door with a big smile. She looked beautiful in a dark print dress. I would have known her anywhere—that same gorgeous black hair, that beautiful dimple in the right cheek, those bright eyes, that bubbly smile. She offered me tea and fresh-from-the-oven banana bread. Her husband, Brandon, and teen-age daughter, Ursula, sat with us at the table. Stories flew back and forth—about the plays Laurel was in with the Applegate Youth Theater, about their travels in France, about my graduate school days. All three of them made me feel completely welcomed and loved. I was charmed and touched and warmed all over again by how much I loved Laurel.

    If Karina had made that connection for me, the other person from those days, whom I hadn't seen for thirty years, made the connection on her own. Kelly, the same age as my son, Ela, had grown up on this same isolated mountainside I live on still. She was often at my house during those times, and if she was something of a surrogate daughter to me, I was a fill-in mother when she needed me, too.

Kelly, is second from the left, bottom row. Ela is to her right.
I am behind her, to her left. Horizon School. 1981.

    It was a wonderful reunion with Kelly. I met her husband and two sons, and she urged me to visit her on her farm near Portland. She invited me to the grape-crush party they have every year at harvest season.

    So while I was in Portland to visit Laurel and other friends, I visited Kelly, too, at her beautiful farm outside of Portland. She, too, made me feel loved and welcomed, and, as with Laurel and Karina, I loved seeing her as a mature woman—her competence, the tastefulness with which she decorated her house, the hospitality with which she served her guests, who all went home with jars of grape juice. I loved being in her gardens and in her charming guest house.

    The care with which Karina, Kelly, and Laurel welcomed me into their adult lives touched me to the core. Karina showing me special places on the coast, Kelly loading me with gifts, Laurel's beautiful dress and banana bread and wanting her husband and daughter to know me, too—I was deeply touched by these gestures. Teachers like to think they have had an influence on their students, but, of course, we rarely get to know whether that's true. Here were three instances of reconnecting with students whom I had loved when they were children and whom I loved all over again, knowing them as adults. In those reunions, in the enthusiasm these women expressed for seeing me again, in our tales of our shared pasts, I felt that our teacher-student relationship had been as meaningful to them as it had been to me, a relationship that has now matured into a lasting friendship between adults.

    

Building Arguments

     In Writing 122 classes at Rogue Community College and the University of Oregon, I taught how to write an argumentative paper: how to build an argument for a position on a controversial issue. One of the important aspects of building that argument is to understand the point of view of the opposite side from the one you've taken. You can't just argue for your position. You have to answer the arguments of the opposite position.

    Yesterday I listened to an interview with Liza Wiemer on the NPR program "Think," about her new young adult novel, The Assignment. In this book, a high school teacher, teaching a unit on World War II, gives his students an assignment to argue for the Final Solution, the genocide of the Jews. In the novel, two students, both seniors, take a stand against the assignment itself, finding it reprehensible to build an argument in favor of such a position that cannot be morally justified.

    I haven't read the book, but apparently the point is how heroic those two students, Cade and Logan, were in defying the assignment, the teacher, the principal, and everyone else who thought it was a fair assignment. The interviewer didn't ask Wiemer the question that nagged at me throughout the program: What was wrong with the assignment? I know what is wrong with the Final Solution, but what was wrong in asking students to look squarely at it? Wiemer spoke about similar real-life assignments she felt just as strongly were inappropriate.

    But what's wrong with asking students to look closely at bad arguments? Is there any justification for genocide? No, of course not. Is there any benefit in trying to understand how people try to justify it or other acts of evil? Of course there is! Otherwise, we're just saying, "I'm right, and you're wrong" without any examination of arguments and evidence or any attempt to understand why people act as they do. 

    What would I have done if a student had wanted to write a WR 122 paper arguing that the Final Solution was a good idea? I think I would have helped that student look at the proposed arguments and see where they didn't stand up to reasonable examination. I did this sometimes with students: helped them see that to write a paper upholding a certain point of view might not result in a good paper (and a good grade) because the evidence wouldn't support their thesis. Isn't that what the teacher in Wiemer's novel would be doing with his assignment—helping students see by their own research and critical thinking that the Final Solution had no good arguments in its favor? The summary of the novel on Amazon.com calls the assignment a "school debate." Why wouldn't it have been better for Cade and Logan, instead of trying to get the assignment erased, to dig into the ideas behind the Final Solution and expose their falsity, cruelty, and reprehensibility? 

    I think we must not be afraid to look at bad ideas and see them for what they are. Maybe the assignment was a bad idea, but the interview with Wiemer didn't present reasons to prove it. Both Wiemer and the interviewer assumed the assignment was the wrong one.  I'm not so sure. Wiemer is Jewish. Would that have been a factor in her position? Yes, it was a terrible thing to murder the Jews. That doesn't mean it is a terrible thing to try to understand how people came to think it was a good idea. 

    Mike, my husband, who died in 2020, was also Jewish. I wish he were still alive so I could discuss these ideas with him.

Carberry Creek swimming hole

    While my son was growing up, I used to go with him to a nearby swimming hole. The water was deep and green, the rocks smooth for picnicking on or high for jumping from. It was a jewel of a place. The only people I ever saw there were the friends who lived on its creek. I once took a class of kids I was teaching in a multi-age classroom for an outing at that swimming hole. The sight of children swarming over the rocks and jumping into the water under the looming cliff of the mountain—it was a picture from a children's book, a scene of the paradise of nature and innocence.

    The swimming hole is large enough for a real swim, round and round. It is deep enough for the daring to dive off the high rock at its edge. I did the last high dive of my life from that rock. I wrenched my neck when I hit the water and decided my high-diving career was over. 

    Then "city folks" discovered my swimming hole. It began to be trashed—plastic bags on the rocks, broken glass in the crevices, toilet paper in the woods. Once my son and his stepbrother were carefully picking up the broken glass when two macho guys who were there, drinking beer, looked at the two good-deed teen-agers and deliberately tossed their bottles onto the rocks, scattering broken glass. People like that were invading my paradise.

    Now, all summer, every summer, I see cars parked at the top of the road to the swimming hole. I never go there any more.

    The last time I wanted to go there, many years ago, I parked on the main, gravel road and started walking down the steep, deeply rutted road to the creek. I was alone; it was early evening. Although there were no cars parked on the gravel road, the access road can be navigated in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. I began getting weird vibes. Was I sensing something dangerous? Or was I just jumpy? I'll never know because I decided to trust my instincts and forego my swim. I turned around and went home and never went back to my favorite swimming hole again. It had been ruined.

    A few days ago I was on the road that goes by the swimming hole and suddenly yearned to see it again. How would it have changed? Was it still idyllic? There were no cars parked on the road. It was too late in the season for anyone to want to be there. I parked on the gravel road and started down the trail. I got no freaky vibes. I walked the ten-minute trail to the creek. 

    And there I entered Eden again. It was as beautiful as ever. No time had passed since I had been there with my son. It was as it used to be. There was no trash, no broken glass. The water was pristine, deep, and green. The little waterfall was as full as it ever was; no drought was affecting this creek. It was the idyll I used to know.

    I took off my clothes and went for swim. The water was as bracingly cold as I remembered. 

Water in the Midst of Drought

    I know we're in a drought here in southern Oregon. I know it when I see maple leaves turning brown, not yellow and way too soon, looking tired and dry with crumbly edges. I know it when I look at madrone trees, whose blossoms made me so ecstatic this spring (see blog post on May 20) but whose berries are not the abundant bright red bundles I had expected. Instead, they are shriveled hard knobs hanging on twigs before they drop. The trees look stressed and unhappy.

    Nevertheless.

    I was on two trails close to my house last week, while the Rogue Valley was socked in with smoke and my side of the mountain enjoyed blue skies. First I went up the O'Brien Creek trail to the Boundary trail, which starts on Windy Gap, to my right, and stretches south through the Siskiyous for 15 1/2 miles. I usually turn here towards Windy Gap and Grayback Mountain, but this time, for a change, I turned left, to hike as close to the junction with the Oregon Caves trail as I had time for. 

    A few days after I hiked O'Brien Creek, I climbed up the Sturgis Fork trail to meet the same Boundary trail, further south. From there I could have turned right, as I usually do, to hike to the top of Mt. Elijah and on to Oregon Caves, meeting, this time, the ghost of myself from a few days earlier. Instead, though, I turned left, on a part of the trail I had never done before. I was curious to see what it was like.

    What I discovered on both hikes was (1) views in both directions of a lot of smoke in the mountains and valleys, which made me grateful for the blue sky over my head, 

Gone-to-seed but still beautiful fireweed

 on the Boundary Trail south of Sturgis Fork

and (2) a lot of water flowing down the mountain. Both trails cross numerous small creeks. None of these becks flowed sluggishly. All were lined with thick riparian vegetation, the greenery hanging low over the gurgling streams. All sang their songs as they tumbled down the steep hillside. All looked as they always have when I hike the O'Brien Creek and Sturgis Fork trails. There was no sign of drought.

    The O'Brien Creek trail crosses a couple of steep meadows, where the big-tree forest, with its open understory, gives way to the rampant low-growing greenery of wide wet areas streaking down the mountain, a swath of color through the dark trunks of the forest. At one place on the trail, I noticed that though greenery was tumbling downhill to my left, the ecosystem on the uphill side of the trail provided only the drier soils in which the big trees thrive. There had to be a spring just below the trail. 

    Listening carefully, I could hear it bubbling on the hillside below me.

    I wanted to see that spring. 

    I climbed down the hillside, picking my way carefully through the plants, watching for holes in the spongey ground, following the sound of quietly bubbling water until, parting the leaves with my hiking pole, I found the spring, a deep dark hole out of which poured water, enough to keep a wide track of soil wet enough for a veritable cloak of wetlands vegetation, following the spring's small streamlet all the way down the mountain. 

    What a blessing: water pouring out of the ground. I paused there for a long moment of worship and thanksgiving before continuing along the trail.

The Influence of Poetry

    I memorized my first poem in third grade, a poem that so influenced me—those rhymes and rhythms, those images!— I still remember it, though I'll admit it took some hard work to dredge it from that ancient memory. I didn't look for it on the internet because I thought that would spoil the fun, but after I recalled the whole thing, I did look it up, so I can tell you that it's called "Indian Children" and is by Annette Wynne. It influenced me towards a life-long love of poetry, and of memorizing poetry, too, but also, more unconsciously, it influenced me by its "message": the recognition of other ways, the nonjudgemental tone, the emphasis on nature (of the Indian ways). 

      Later, when I was a teenager, struggling, like all teenagers, with what kind of person I wanted to be, I owned a thin volume of poems called 101 Famous Poems. (I still have the book.) I read the poems in this anthology again and again. Many of them I memorized. Some of the poems influenced me with their exhortations about how to live, such as Longfellow's "A Psalm of Life"—

 

        "Tell me not in mournful numbers

        Life is but an empty dream

        For the soul is dead that slumbers,

        And things are not what they seem.

        Life is real! Life is earnest!

        And the grave is not its goal.

        To dust thou art, to dust returnest

        Was not said of the soul,

and Rudyard Kipling's "If"—"If you can keep your head when all about you/Are losing theirs and blaming it on you," which continues with similar two-line conditional clauses that eventually end, I'm sorry to say, with "[If you can do all this] you'll be a man, my son." The gender reference grated, but I managed to ignore it in order to apply the advice to my own life. 

    My romantic, and searching, teen-age soul relished this kind of poetry I found in this book, whether at the poetic level of Shakespeare (Hamlet's soliloquy) and Emily Dickinson ("If I can stop one heart from breaking,/I shall not live in vain") or of Frank L. Stanton, who gave similar advice in worse poetry ("If you strike a thorn or a rose/Keep a-goin'/If it rains or if it snows/Keep a-goin'). In trying to understand life, I delved into the poems of death, such as William Cullen Bryant's "Thanatopsis," with its love of nature, to which, the poem says, we return when we die.  I memorized poem after poem of this ilk, and if I didn't end up understanding life, at least these poems influenced me to think about life and what it meant and what I should make of mine. You can't say such words to yourself over and over without their having an influence on you. Poetry does that.

    Being a teenager and therefore between the worlds of childhood and adulthood, I was as influenced by the book's poems that taught their lessons with a lighter touch—"The Spider and the Fly," by Mary Howitt, for instance—as by poems of the gravity of "Thanatopsis." One of the wonderful things about reading this book at that age was that I responded entirely to the poem itself, regardless of the poet, who might have been as famous as Shakespeare or as unknown as Mary Howitt. I was also unsophisticated enough to not know whether the poem was good or bad—maudlin, sappy, sing-song, as some of them are—none of it mattered. If I liked the poem, I read it over and over and often memorized it just so I could say those lines— that beautiful language, that wisdom—whenever they occurred to me. Even today lines from those poems float through my mind from time to time. Isn't that what influence is?

    Besides the poems with life lessons, I was influenced, in the same anthology, by poems that played with language, such as Edgar Allen Poe's monotonously melodic poem "The Bells." I liked the poems that used a vernacular ("It takes a heap o' livin' in a house t' make it home/A heap of sun an' shadder, and ye sometimes have t' roam…"). I recited one of those vernacular poems, "Knee-Deep in June," by James Whitcomb Riley, in the high school variety show, dressed in overalls and straw hat, in keeping with the narrator of the poem. 

    "Knee-Deep in June" like "Indian Children," also illustrates a third influence from poetry: a relationship with nature. Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much with Us" and "Daffodils," Bryant's "Thanatopsis," Sidney Lanier's "Song of the Chattahoochee," among others in 101 Famous Poems. Later in my literary studies and grown-up world the exhortative life-is-real-life-is-earnest poems fell out of favor with me, but the influence of nature poems has been a constant. 

    Nature poems and language-conscious poems have had the biggest influence not only in my life but in my writing. Gerard Manley Hopkins—huge influence. Wordsworth. Robinson Jeffers. At the same time, I am still, as I was as a teen-ager, influenced by poems that deal with life's depths: Kenneth Patchen's heartbreakingly beautiful and deeply despondent prose-poem "I Have No Place to Take Thee"; Wordworth's "The World Is Too Much with Us"; Hopkins's "Binsley Poplars," about the felling of a grove of his favorite trees, in which he says, "Oh, if we but knew what we do/When we delve and hew/Hack and rack the growing green." I can see the influence of such poems in how I write and what I write about, as I strive and strive to reach such beauty and such depth.

    Finally, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, of the fourteenth century, and Edmund Spencer's The Faerie Queene, of the sixteenth, both of which I studied thoroughly in college and graduate school, influenced me in the same way "Indian Children" did—by showing me, in the language of poetry, different ways of living and being. These two book-length poems touch on all aspects of life—the good and the evil, our struggles to live good lives, our loves and loyalties and fallacies, all in a beautiful poetry (oh, that vernacular!) with characters and plot and everything else that makes good literature influence how we live. 

    I love these great poems, as I still love a lot (but not all) of those earlier poems that influenced me. But this isn't a list of my favorite poems, although, of course, some of these are also some of my favorites, but a list of poems that have made a difference in my life. For them I am grateful.

What's Ahead Climate-wise

     

   The whole way home from my hike in Mt. Rainier National Park last week, I drove through smoke. Southern Oregon was especially bad. Those fires again. And hot as blazes again. The sun is a red ball of fire in a steel-gray sky. Apocalyptic images.

    As I drove I listened to the New York Times's radio program, "The Daily." The discussion was about the United Nations' latest report on climate change. The reporter made three points:

    (1) The report states definitively that the earth is growing hotter (fairly obvious to everyone on earth by now, I should think) and that the increased temperature is human-caused, that we have fouled our own nest.

    (2) Even if we stopped all carbon emissions immediately, we are stuck with the effects of climate change for thirty years—the fires, floods, hurricanes, droughts, and other extreme weather events that have so horrified us for the past decades. That means that for the rest of my life I'll see these unbearably hot summers at my home and these raging wildfires that stink up the air and destroy our forests and our homes. I have probably already seen the last of the heavy snows at my house (and how I loved that snow!), and it will become increasingly hard to find good skiing within a couple hours' drive. This summer's drought will be repeated, year after year. I'm afraid that the world as I knew and loved it is already over.

    (3) However, if we stopped all carbon emissions tomorrow (yesterday), we could turn things around after those thirty years. That is to say, there is a chance for my granddaughter to eventually experience a better world, in spite of the apocalyptic conditions my generation, and those before it, have brought to her. 

    Do we have the "political will" to make that change? Ask me personally: you bet! I'll do whatever it takes to renew our world in thirty years. Driving less, certainly. Maybe no more hiking in the Dolomites, as I would so love to do. Finding a way to take the bus—maybe there would be a service with a stop in the Applegate. Maybe we'll be given carbon rations—if you bicycle to work every day, you'll save enough carbon tickets to be able to drive to the beach on Saturday. Inconvenient, yes, but I'm willing. I'll do whatever is asked of me, to make those kinds of sacrifices to compensate for the selfishness I have indulged in, without knowing the harm I was causing, by my normal living. 

    The hitch is that we all have to be willing to make those sacrifices. Mine are meaningless unless they are matched by everyone else's. And I'm afraid the COVID pandemic has shown that many people in our country have very little concept of doing something for the common good. If people won't even get vaccinated, when the results are so immediate and so obvious, what will it take to get them to change drastically their way of life for results they'll never see, for a better life for the children's children they don't even know? If they won't even accept the government's efforts to make us wear masks to keep us safe—much less to shut things down for the same reasons—how will they ever accept restrictions on our use of carbon?

    We could avoid the collapse of all civilization, but are we willing to do what it takes? 

    I am. 

    And you?

And Then the Hike Itself

     Last week I did the much anticipated two-night backpacking trip on the Mother Mountain Loop at Mt. Rainier National Park with my son, Ela, and his friends Steve, Micala, and Lucius. My two previous posts expressed my anxiety about being able to do it, so now I'm obligated to tell you how I did.

    I did great. 

Photo by Lucius Williams

    And it was a great trip.

    The beginning was easy—car camping at Mowich Lake, with a good dinner of non-freeze-dried food. I swam in the lake, and, later, we all took a walk along the shore, where Ela played his bamboo flute,

Ela playing his flute high on the mountain.
Photo by Lucius Williams

sending that native-American sound meandering around the rock cliffs and floating over the broad expanse of the sunset-red lake.

    The next morning I was up at 6:00 for another swim. In the early-morning light I had that whole big beautiful lake to myself.

Photo by Lucius Williams

      With an eleven-mile hike ahead of us, to Ipsut Campground, we were on the trail by 8:30. 

     For the first few miles the trail humped its way, now gently, now steeply, through beautiful big-tree forests. Undergrowth was lush and the waterfalls jaw-droppingly beautiful. At the first waterfall we marveled at the long, thick ribbon of water, sunlit at its top, a hundred feet or more above us. But that was only prelude to the sight awaiting the nerves-of-steel hiker who, with all caution, crossed the two thin logs spanning the gushing river to the opposite shore,

A nerves-of-steel river crossing
       Photo by Diana Coogle

where the full waterfall came into view—the long free-fall before the water hit the rocks and spread out in a veil before coalescing into a river again. 

Micala and me at the waterfall Photo by Ela Lamblin

    At each river or creek crossing, usually on a flat-cut log with a pole railing on one side,

Micala on bridge            Photo by Lucius Williams

I stopped to admire—worship—the fullness of the water, streaming, cascading, gushing through greenery and rock. Yet in the back of my mind I knew that that force and gush of water that I loved to see was coming from the too-sudden, too-fast melt of Mt. Rainier's precious glaciers. 

    One bridge over a surging, silt-filled glacial river was especially daunting, as the water splashed over the bridge at the far end and boulders bumbled against each other in the tumbling current under the bridge.

Photo by Lucius Williams

    Whenever we emerged from the forest or rounded a curve in the trail, the glaciated bulk of Mt. Rainier, magnified by closeness, came into view—its rounded gray top, its thick white glaciers, its rocky sides. Always awesome.

Front to back: Me, Micala, Steve, Ela
Photo by Lucius Williams

    Around midday we emerged onto the high altitudes of Spray Park, a long series of flower-filled meadows. If I had loved the waterfalls, I loved no less the purple-red--yellow-and-white meadows

Photo by Lucius Williams

stretching through the rocks to the near edge of the world, beyond which were the Cascade peaks—Glacier Peak and Mt. Baker and all the lesser mountains in between. And, unforgettably, even when it was hidden over our shoulders by the nearer mounds, Mt. Rainier.

    The descent was long and beautiful with meadows,

Front to back: Me, Micala, Ela, admiring a flower
Photo by Lucius Williams

creek crossings, rocks, and trees. After taking off my boots to cross a creek, I walked barefooted for a mile or so on duff-soft ground. When the trail turned rocky again, I put my boots back on and, immediately around the bend, came upon Ela, Steve, Micala, and Lucius sprawled on the trail, leaning against packs, feet up, taking a good long rest. I was glad enough to join them. After that, for the rest of the way down the interminably descending trail, I never fell behind.

Front to back: Steve, me Micala, Ela, awed by a waterfall
                         Photo by Lucius Williams

   When we finally got to Ipsut Campground, eleven miles from Mowich Lake, I found a spot on the river where the water was less silty and just deep enough for me to sit in, then lie on my back, then turn over onto my stomach, bathing my entire hot-and-sweaty body. The campground was at the end of a road, now closed but still passable by bicycle, so two other friends, Ann and Todd, had bicycled in to join us for the night, bringing beer and wine with them.

    The next morning the prospect of the intimidatingly steep Ipsut Pass loomed ahead of us. Nonetheless (or maybe therefore), breakfast was leisurely, but I was anxious to get started, so Ann, Micala, and I headed out while Ela, Steve, Lucius, and Todd were still talking around the breakfast table. 

    Up through the forest, always up, but not steeply. I was hiking well. Many creek crossings. More waterfalls. After a couple of miles, Ann turned back; she and Todd had to bicycle back down the road. Micala and I continued up, mile after mile. 

   And then we were out of the forest, and the rock side of a mountain loomed ahead of us, vegetation dropping from it like a waterfall. The up turned steep. Steep and hot. We stopped in the shade of a solitary tree for water. Then on up, steep and hot. Another tree, another swig of water. Then on up. And then, suddenly, two more switchbacks and we were on the pass. High-five!

    I don't want to say it was easy, because it wasn't really easy, but what I want to say is that I did it without difficulty. All that training of the past two weeks—Ipsut Pass was a cinch. Micala and I sat on the pass for a long time, like a congratulatory committee for hikers as they came up. Ela and Steve came charging up, throwing sweat and beaming with the exultation of exertion. Ela perched on a high rock and played his ocarina, to the delight of hikers coming up. ("I knew the top wasn't far when I heard that music.") 

    After a bit Steve went back down the pass to check on Lucius. Pretty soon Steve came huffing back up the pass, fast, just for the fun of it. Lucius was fine. He would be here after a while. He's a photographer and was carrying heavy camera equipment and stopping frequently to take pictures.

Lucius Williams            Photo by Ela Lamblin

    Ela and Steve waited for Lucius, but I was ready for a swim, so Micala and I headed down the trail to Mowich Lake, where I slipped into the cold blue water for a good long swim under the snowy bulk of Mt. Rainier.

Coming in after a swim in Mowich Lake, facing Mt. Rainier 
       Photo by Lucius Williams

Micala explored the trails a bit. Ela, Steve, and Lucius soon arrived and sat on a log, dangling their feet in the water. 

    Finally it was time to load packs in the car and go home. Hugs and good-byes all around, promises to do another trip together. 

    "You kick ass," Steve told me, as we parted. 

    "Well, I'm no Tara," I said modestly—Tara, the ultra-runner who had organized this trip and then was unable to come. Steve, Micala, and Ela always say, "Tara kicks ass."

    Steve wouldn't let his praise be deflected. "You're who Tara wants to be when she's your age," he said. 

Mt. Rainier, on the Mother Mountain Loop.     Photo by Lucius Williams