New Year's Eve 2017

            Maybe 2017 was full of downers, politically. Maybe it had its ups and downs for me, personally. Maybe it had tearful days and disappointments among happy days and triumphs, but whatever else I can say about it, I can definitely say that it ended with a great day.

            I had suggested to Mike that he and I hike up Kerby Peak on the last day of the year, since there would be no snow (not in this lousy winter!) and the rattlesnakes that abound there would be asleep in their dens. My son, visiting for the holidays from Washington, said he would like to join us, so early on the morning of January 31 the three of us set off on the trail.

            Mike and I hike together a lot. We know each other's rhythms and habits. I usually hike in front. I hike less often with Ela. He was in the lead on the New Year's Eve hike. I could tell that he was holding back, containing his energy and his strength so we could all hike together. I was reminded of hiking the Horse Camp trail with him, years ago, when he was twenty and I was forty-seven. I was working hard to climb that steepest trail in the Applegate. Ela hiked ahead of me, so much at his leisure that he was talking, walking backwards, juggling pine cones. Now he is the age I was then, and I'm still twenty-seven years older, and the walking ratio has remained as constant as the age ratio. About a mile before the top, Ela let go of companionable hiking and strode on his long, strong legs to the top of the mountain, where he waited for Mike and me to catch up. I wondered if, were today's Ela to hike with the Ela of his younger years, his two-decade-different selves would have the difficulty-to-age ratio of his and mine. Or if, were my forty-seven-year-old self to hike with me now, it would be waiting for me on top of the mountain, as Ela was.

           The Kerby Peak trail is one of the steepest trails along the Highway 199 corridor, with an elevation gain of 2600 feet in the six and a half miles it takes to get to the top (at 5,545 feet). We hiked through beautiful Douglas fir forests, rock outcroppings (where the rattlesnakes, abundant on Kerby Peak, were sleeping!), low-lying manzanita, and some of the best stands of Brewers spruce I know of in the Siskiyous.

            The top of Kerby Peak rewards the hiker with a spectacular 360-degree view. On January 31, 2017, the peak poked above dense white fog, lying thick and unmoving over the circular landscape below us. 

Rounded green peaks humped here and there above the fog-sea. Snow-streaked mountains of the Siskiyou Wilderness rose in the distance. A strong cold wind pushed all around us. We ate lunch

 and admired the view 

until we were ready to escape the wind and head down the trail again.

            After the hike we stopped for coffee at my favorite coffee shop in Grants Pass. Then we all went back to my house for a good New Year's Eve dinner: chili, sauteed portobellos, chocolate eclairs, and champagne. We weren't sure we wanted to stay awake till midnight, but we played a game of Scrabble after dinner, then another. Then it was close enough to the new year that we entertained each other with more games of wit and words until finally it was midnight. We rang in the new year, Ela did a video chat with his daughter, and we went to bed.

            I stretched my well worked body horizontal in my bed and drowsed into sleep without thinking about the goods and the bads of the past year. I didn't need to. It felt at the moment that it had been a good year indeed and that the new year, with such a good start, would be a good one, too.

The Appropriateness – or not – of Christmas Gifts

In one Christmas carol, the shepherd boy says to the king, “Do you know what I know? A child, a child, shivers in the cold.”

            “Let us bring him silver and gold,” says the king. Silver and gold, frankincense and myrrh for a baby born in a sheep’s stall?! What were the Wise Men thinking? They should have brought blankets, tea, and hot-cross buns.

            Thus began our long tradition of giving gifts for Christmas, which, all too often, reflect this origin with their inappropriateness. How many times have we given incense and baubles to friends who needed blankets and buns? But trying to figure out whether that friend would rather have gifts for a king even if he is shivering in the cold is half the fun of the whole tradition.  The other half is receiving gifts that by being so perfect tell us how well the giver knows us – a kitchen knife from my sister, some merino wool for a new knitting project from my son, a book of word puzzles from Mike. 

To help with appropriateness, some members of my family like to give out Christmas wish lists, which insure that the giver will have the satisfaction of pleasing the recipient and that the recipient will be relieved of the burden of unwanted gifts. Nonetheless, I’m not always fond of this method. It diminishes the element of surprise and deprives the giver of half the fun. Besides, if I put needle-nose pliers on my list, what’s to keep me from getting needle-nose pliers from every person who sees the list?

A few years ago I was invited to a Christmas party with close friends who all agreed not to buy gifts but to find things in our own homes to give each other. At first this sounded like a garage sale exchange plan, but I found I don’t want to give my friends what I don’t want, either. There is no spirit in such a gift. I won’t give away the bowl my father made or my great-grandmother’s tea set, either, because the feeling-bond associated with those items is strong for me and negligible for anyone else. But a pretty necklace an ex-boy friend gave me is just right for Myria (I don’t want to be reminded of the ex-boy friend, anyway), my library can be thinned of books if I really try, and I’ll let go of my stash of yarns to give to Louann, who is a weaver.

Maybe Mary accepted the gifts of the Wise Men thinking, “What on earth am I going to do with frankincense?” and if she didn’t quite manage, “Just what I always wanted!” she surely smiled and said thank you, responding not so much to the gift as to the feeling-bond the gift represented. And it is that feeling-bond, in the end, that is at the heart of the gift-giving tradition, for it is that that we mean when we give our gifts.

Christmas in Ruins; Christmas Reclaimed

            I was knitting a Christmas gift one evening last week, sitting on the couch with the Christmas tree twinkling in its lights at my elbow, when suddenly, with a clatter and a tinkling, the tree came crashing down, spilling water from its stand, breaking class balls, flinging tinsel, and scattering Santa Clauses, reindeer, angels, and snowflakes all over the floor.

          Christmas in ruins.

          Aghast, I jumped up. Stepping carefully over broken glass and delicate ornaments, I pushed the tree upright again, holding it vertical. Then all I could do was stand there, foolishly, wondering what to do, and then even more foolishly, since no one was around, I called out, "Can you help me? Could you bring me some string?" No one answered, of course, so I gently laid the Christmas tree back on the floor, hoping not to lose more ornaments or tangle more tinsel, and went to get string. Then I pushed the tree upright again. It's a good thing the place for the tree is in front of the stairs. I tied it to the railing, then stepped back to assess the situation.

        One Christmas years ago, in the old house, after spending hours putting up and decorating the Christmas tree, I sat next to it to play my guitar. When I had finished playing, I put the guitar back in its case, closed the lid, and walked away, pulling the Christmas tree down as I went. I had caught a limb of the tree in the guitar case.

        That tree had been precariously planted in a bucket of dirt. This one had been put in a Christmas tree stand, which should have made it a lot sturdier, but this tree, as that one, was ultimately balanced with a very large rock. It wasn't that a mischievous Santa's elf had kicked the rock off the stand, but that the mischievous gravity elf, working day and night ("I think I can; I think I can"), had finally succeed in finding the tipping point, and over the tree went.

       I could hear the elf chortling with laughter somewhere up the stairs.

       The force of the fall had pulled the tree out of the prongs that tightened against the trunk. Though now upright again, it was twisted out of its original position. I couldn't get it back into the prongs and twisted right again while it was tied to the railing, nor could I both hold it up and work on its base at the same time. "Can someone help me?"

         No answer.

         I called Mike, who said he would be there the next day. When he arrived, I told him I had been in such a hurry to get the tree upright, as though the longer it lay on the floor the more ornaments would be ruined, I hadn't thought to take a picture. Now I wanted to recreate the scene of the crime for a photograph. We untied the tree from the railing and laid it on the floor again. I scattered the tossed-off ornaments around it and took the broken pieces of glass from the dust bin and laid them strategically among the ornaments. 

After I took pictures, we re-raised the tree, which I held in place while Mike re-secured it in its stand. Then we tied it to the railing, untangled tinsel from branches, carefully removed ornaments that had fallen askew, and redecorated the tree.

            It looks fine now, and is securely in place. Gifts are placed safely under it, and I knit again under the tinsel-twinkling Christmas tree, without fear of disaster from either Santa elf or gravity elf.

            Christmas reclaimed.