the chino house spent the summer of 2008 on the road. we drove to the pacific northwest, camped all over oregon, washington and british columbia, then drove home through canada. it was the adventure of a lifetime. because i find it awkward to read blogs backwards, here it all is for your reading pleasure. start to finish.
April 8, 2008
now that i have shelled out over $300 for four children’s passports, i am committed.
the chino house is taking to the road for the summer. in a little over 6 weeks we will be rolling out to spend our summer in beautiful british columbia, where we will make memories that will last a lifetime and where taido will (hopefully) write a thesis that will complete a degree he began 9 years ago. the jury is still out on where (and more specifically in what) we will be living for the summer. RV? tents? BMV?
May 13, 2008
we leave in exactly 10 days on our summer adventure. the newest development in our road trip is that a couple in our church is being crazy generous to us by letting us borrow their very nice pop up camper for the summer. we set it up for a test run in our kids’ school parking lot last night and friends, it is NICE. we are getting super excited as the days narrow between our normal life and our alternative one. a friend sent me this great link today that made me smile about the stories our kids will tell in 10-20 years about their summer on the road.
May 21, 2008
in exactly 48 hours, we’ll be out on the open road. at least i think so, even if it does not seem possible that by that time i will have finished all those things i am meaning to do before i leave.
i will have packed up all the semi-organized piles that are currently scattered about the house. i will have chosen which books are going and which books are staying behind, as well as which kitchen treasures are truly necessary in life and are making the cut.
i will have attended one of my favorite events of the year at our church, senior night. students to whom we have grown quite attached will lead us in worship, show us pictures and video that encapsulate their distinct personalities and make us cry as they get ready to leave us. two of these students are ones for whom i have said prayers for a very long time, since they were babies, one even in the womb. (which makes me older than i feel most days) by the time we come back, they will have flown away. to make their dreams come true as they hold onto jesus. i hope.
i will have broken one more phone (oh yeah…i already did that yesterday) which makes three this year, which means no more phones for me for a while.
i will have returned all the library books, even if i haven’t written down that campground in wyoming yet. and i will have returned borrowed books, movies, tupperwares and cds.
i will not have quibbled with taido about any more details, i hope. i will have gone with the flow, as grandmother says.
i will have said goodbye too many times. to too many people.
in 48 hours, it will just be too bad if i didn’t get the floor swept (sorry, lora!) or didn’t make fresh energy bars. too bad if i didn’t get that last card written and mailed. too bad if i didn’t use that last bag of lettuce. it will all be behind me. finished or not. i will take a deep breath. and look straight ahead.
May 26, 2008
Saturday May 24, 2008
REI Parking Lot
Denver, CO
Our last week at home was crazy but wonderful. I really had no idea the kind of response that our leaving for the summer would initiate in the folks with whom we normally do life. We were showered with all kinds of love and blessing as we said our goodbyes. Laden with treasures for the road, we headed home from saying goodbye while our babies spent their last night at their grandparents. I frantically finished packing and cleaning when we got home at nearly 10pm, and so it wasn’t until I sat down near 1am to read a couple of verses and breathe a thankful sigh to my Maker that I realized how incredibly honorably we had been treated over the last several days. All of a sudden it completely overwhelmed me. Not just the homemade cookies and energy bars. Not just the books, games, puzzles or even the “happy trails” banner to hang in our summer home. Or the money for gas or gift cards for the road. Or the details like Whitney showing up with a red bucket after she knew I had searched and searched for one for my own little wannabe member of the Mysterious Benedict Society. As I reflected on the “shower” we’d been given in our last days at home, it was how much we had been loved that hit me. That people actually care that we are going away. I guess I hadn’t thought about it that much. It’s not like we’re not coming back. The summers usually fly by so quickly that I have really thought that people would hardly notice we were gone. But I think God knew that somehow this outpouring of affection would be the wings we would fly out of town on and will carry us through our lonelier days. Through any doubts and darkness ahead.
I walked through our empty house one last time before I finally fell into bed. I could feel that lump in my throat swelling up as I put away the last of the clean clothes that weren’t going with us. I closed all the closets and turned off all the lights. But when I started to feel like I might sit down and cry, I drew from the lasting warmth of our evening and I just felt fuzzy instead of sad. I worried for a minute that our taking this big adventure and having so many blaring needs in light of that adventure (a need for a camper or for lots of watching Simon while preparing to leave came to mind) was putting us unnecessarily at the center of everyone’s attention. I never want anyone to feel obligated to make a big fuss over me. But I tried to let that go in the wake of how grateful I felt (and still feel) for whatever circumstances have allowed me to see how much we are loved by this community we call home. And in their eyes, a glimpse of the depth of the love that God has for me.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Riding shotgun from Rocky Mountain National Park to the Grand Tetons
Our first few days on the road have been nothing if not eventful. It is now amusing to me that I left Arkansas desperately in need of a good night’s sleep after the last couple of weeks of lying in bed at night and thinking of all the things I still needed to do or pack. (Why didn’t I get up right then and pack the whisk and the potato peeler?) I thought that I would just sleep and sleep when my head finally hit that pillow in our sweet rig. Well, let’s just say that we are in the phase of the journey that I would call “working out the kinks.” We knew our first night was going to be a crapshoot. Come on. We were driving all the way to Denver on our first day and then hoping to roll into a state park around 10pm on Friday of Memorial Weekend and find a place open to camp. Somewhere on the road in Kansas we started calling parks and realized that, ahem, they were all going to be full. It was going to be so late when we rolled into Denver that we decided we should just pull into a KOA on the outskirts since they actually had spots. After hearing that all the parks were full, I was grateful to find an open spot, never mind that it was RIGHT in between two other rigs like our own and very dark when we were pulling out the pop up for the first time, while many others watched from their cozy RVs and chuckled, “Hey, look at the rookies!” I kept chanting grateful phrases in my head as I listened to the semis roll by on the highway as I tried to fall asleep, freezing cold and with Simon bundled up between Taido and me. I thought about all the people praying for us. I thought about how we had found ourselves in Kansas in a rain and hailstorm so heavy that I began to pray out loud that Taido could see (instead of screaming at him to pull over). I was praying with my eyes closed (because the only thing worse than driving through a storm in which you can’t see out the front windshield is watching someone else do it) and Cole said, “Hey Mom! Dad can see!” I opened my eyes and it was truly as though God had parted the storms for us. There was darkness to our left and right, and ominous clouds behind us, but streaks of light poured down on the road just ahead of us. We had clear roads the rest of our way, dodging bad weather all around us. As we drove, I could almost hear my Grandmother’s prayers for good weather for traveling and for safety for our family. I knew that she was probably watching the weather even at that moment. When we stopped for dinner, the gas station attendants were warning people not to drive east for the next hour because of tornadoes. It was then that we realized the extent of the protection we had received. And so, somehow the cold and the loud noise of the highway, however annoying, seemed small in comparison to the fact that here we were in Colorado, all six Chinos together in our little provided shelter. I also chuckled as I remembered Ben getting out of the van and saying to me as Taido was putting up the camper in the dark in what is essentially a glorified parking lot, “Hey Mom, should we go hunting for some stuff for our scratchbook?” He has been very excited about this darling scrapbook that Jerusalem gave us that has little bags in it to put your treasures from the road. Ben has been dying to put something in the “scratchbook,” as he calls it, almost as much as he is dying to spend every dime of his money before we even get to Vancouver. I told him he could take only two dollars into a gas station in Kansas and that he didn’t have to spend it. He came out with a magnet of Oklahoma (because we did drive through Oklahoma) that was $1.99 and when I asked him how he paid for the tax with only two dollars he said, “Well, I’m a kid and sometimes people, you know, they just let little kids.” Little optimist.
The next day we rolled into Denver for some Einstein’s Bagels, a stop at Whole Foods, a stop at REI (of course!) to get Ben a new sleeping bag because his toddler bag is being passed down to Simon and a new rain shelter for our Kelty Carrier. Then we ate lunch at Tokyo Joe’s in Boulder before we headed to Rocky Mountain National Park. Strangely, in all our trips to Colorado, neither Taido nor I have ever been there. It is different from the other areas we camp in Colorado in its appeal to international tourists. It still has the majestic beauty of Colorado in full and because animals are protected from hunting and the park only just opened to campers this weekend, we saw lots of wildlife. The kids were shouting from their seats and pointing out the windows (even Simon) at all the elk and deer. Is there anything more beautiful than a deer? I will never tire of seeing them. We also saw mountain goats and wild turkeys, rolling down the windows to hear them gobble at one another. We hiked to Alberta Falls on a snow covered trail. Simon’s favorite thing might have been the Park Shuttle which runs through the park on the weekends and is free, so you don’t have to use your own gas driving the mountain roads. Also, you can be dropped off at a trailhead and then picked up from another one. Simon was just ecstatic to ride on someone’s lap instead of in a car seat.
Two of the three eastern campgrounds were full when we arrived, and the pass to the western campgrounds was still closed due to snow, so we were grateful to get one of the last available spots at Glacier Basin Campground, even if we had to move to a new spot the next day due to our own spot being reserved for someone else. We moved about 5 spots down, so we just sort of paraded everything down the road. Taido didn’t even put the camper all the way down. Our neighbors said we looked like homesteaders walking behind the popped up camper with our kitchen supplies. I told them their description was not entirely inaccurate.
It was cold our first night, so cold that it even snowed a little. I couldn’t bear to come out of my sleeping bag and when I did have to undo my drawstring a little to poke my head out and cover Simon back up, I had hopes that maybe our next destination would be at a slightly lower elevation. It seems like our current itinerary, drawn up by the gearhead, goes from one mountain range to another. I might have known I would be freezing cold in a campground called Glacier Basin, but I haven’t seen a bug yet. I did say many grateful prayers for our camper. Even though I think I was shaking down to my bones, I was so glad I could go inside, turn on a light switch and sit down on a little couch to read the next chapter of our book to the kids. Had I been crawling into a tent, I think I might have started crying. The second night was a tad warmer, but in exchange for its being not as cold, we got rain. Thankfully it had stopped when we packed the camper down at 6:30 this morning. We tried to tuck the wet outside edges in a way that the inside will not be wet when we open it around 10pm tonight in the Tetons. We’ll see.
Most oft repeated phrase at this point is Taido saying, “We’re living the dream honey. Living the dream.” It is usually said in response to a look I am giving him about something that is obviously less than dreamlike, like being up with Si in the middle of the night or a request for an item however small, that will send me crawling through the van digging through fifteen different plastic tubs I am not sure how many more times he is going to say it without getting a black eye.
May 27, 2008
Grand Teton National Park at Signal Mountain Campground
writing in the pop up, aka the Chino Summer Home
For a long time, Taido has wanted to visit the Grand Tetons. When you look at a road map, Yellowstone is the large green square in Wyoming and then south of it is a smaller little national park that is the Grand Tetons, so I wasn’t sure why we wouldn’t just drive on up to the bigger, more famous national park. But I kept quiet because I knew that Taido was highly committed to the Tetons. Most likely I believe this is due to the extensive coverage of this particular mountain range in Backpacker Magazine which both Taido and my father read with the same anticipation I currently have for the new Susan Vreeland book. So as we drove the very long stretch of empty space that is most of Wyoming yesterday, we listened to Blame it on the Tetons and anticipated our late arrival in a long hoped for destination. There is truly very little to take in on the interstate that crosses Wyoming from east to west, except to be amazed by the vastness of the most sparsely populated state in the union. The only life we saw besides the cows and horses that Simon consistently pointed out (MOO! NEIGH!) were the migrating pronghorn antelopes. Every few miles we would see one or two of them in the distance along the road, and they were all headed the same place we were, their summer home in the mountains. After miles and miles of wide expanse that seemed to never end, all of a sudden there were trees. Look, trees! Taido said as we drove into the Bridger-Teton National Forest. Immediately the landscape changed and the scenery became breathtaking. We all were taken in by the sudden change in the terrain, the wild contrast between this lush valley and the rest of the state, covered in sagebrush and rocks.
The entrance into this forest marking the beginning of the end of our long day should have elicited nothing but grateful sighs and happy thoughts from all of us, but somehow the anticipation of the day, the very very long drive, the falling of a light rain, the baby beyond tired of his car seat and the other children clamoring to get out of the BMV and wrestle like bear cubs all conspired to create a sort of tension that somehow erupted into an unpleasant diversion from what should have been simple joy just to be near the Tetons. I will spare you all the details, but let’s just say that what began over one very headstrong man’s resistance to an equally headstrong woman’s desire to go back and have a closer look at what she was certain was a bull moose eventually ended in a night’s stay in the Snow King Resort in Jackson, Wyoming, with many unnecessary remarks in between, not the least of which was a comment from our eldest who while willingly acknowledging his own short temper felt compelled to point out that he comes by it honestly. So we didn’t make it all the way to the beloved Tetons yesterday, but there was swimming and bathing and all kinds of frolicking, wrestling and naruto dueling on soft, fluffy beds.
But still the Tetons awaited us. And they would not disappoint. I am certain that their majesty accounts for the restored energy and hope I feel today, though it’s possible that a shower and a good night’s rest in a heated room last night didn’t hurt.
May 29, 2008
Ok, let’s just say I could definitely live here. What I mean is that I really hope to come back. Many times. If you don’t have your vacation planned for this summer, I am telling you this is it. If you come here and camp, call and reserve site #13 at Signal Mountain Campground in Grand Teton National Park. On your way here, stop in Jackson and get an almond raspberry scone and a perfect cup of coffee at the Jackson Whole Grocer, but bring your own cup and bags because this town is gloriously green. (Even the campgrounds and visitor centers have divided recycle bins!) Taido had to rush me on out of Jackson before I spent every dime of our money. I was as wide eyed as Ben in a Walmart Supercenter as I walked my allotted hour in the streets and shops of Jackson. Besides the Grocer, which though small, had everything I could ever need. Really. I wanted to go ahead and just get a job in there so I could stay close to it. But besides the Grocer, I loved Teton Mountaineering, Skinny Skis, The Hole Kid and Valley Bookstore. The bookstore rivaled our favorite in Taos as far as independents go, and it absolutely wins on addresses, “Gaslight Alley on the Town Square.” Really, I ask you, could that be a cuter address? They have been around for 50 years, which is about how long I could have gotten lost in there if my laundry hadn’t been calling me from the Snow King Resort before checkout time. After we checked out with clean bodies and clothes, we headed finally into the Grand Teton National Park.
We made stops at the visitor centers in Jackson and in Moose, Wyoming. The visitor centers alone are something to see. There is something for everyone. Simon thoroughly enjoyed the animal displays, which are impressive. Ben loved the gift shop; he has now acquired a rubber dagger, which is very necessary in life. Taido talked to rangers and collected information about hikes, campgrounds, snow closures, weather and other things he usually learns through internet access. Cole crawled through a cave display over and over again, trying to scare people by popping out of it growling. Mary Polly watched the movies playing on the floor. I read all the little captions throughout the exhibits. I really love museums, and all things historical. I have read several bits about this couple that spent years and years out here studying the Teton wildlife, Olaus and Mardy Murie. I would really like to get my hands on one of their books, but I wasn’t willing to pay $25 for it at the gift shop. I learned that Jenny of Jenny Lake (which we hiked near this morning) and her six children died of small pox when her adventurous husband drug them all out here to try to live back in the 1800s. Her situation makes mine look like a Hilton paradise. After watching a movie about the park and gathering more flyers and maps, we drove to our campground. We have been to several visitor centers on our trip now and I always ask the kids to try to learn three new things while they are in there that they can later tell me. It is fun to see what they come up with. Ben’s facts are usually the most random, like that elk can run at 35 miles per hour. When we left the Grand Teton National Park visitor center, I was surprised that none of the kids picked up that the three main peaks were originally named Les Trois Tetons by French-Canadian explorers, which translates to the three breasts. Which is just funny. But I suppose the name is an accurate description from some vantage points of what these three giant peaks look like as they seem to burst straight up from the valley. Here’s a quote I wrote down that one of the first leaders of an expedition to this area said about it in 1876,
there are no foothills to the Tetons.
they rise suddenly in rugged majesty from the rock strewn plain…
the soft light floods the great expanse of the valley,
the winding silvery river and the resplendent deeply carved mountain walls.
Our campsite at Signal Mountain was a short walk from a rock beach on Jackson Lake (campsite #13 is right on the beach, but it was taken). We spent a long time walking up and down the rocks just taking in the “rugged majesty” of the peaks. The kids all got muddy and wet throwing rocks into the ice cold lake, but after they changed out of wet socks and shoes and filled their tummies with spaghetti, we went back to the rock beach and watched the sunset behind the mountains. It was at this point that Taido won me back over to his mountain itinerary, which puts Glacier National Park back on our tour to Canada. And so we finished our walk on the rock beach, put away everything in the van (and I mean EVERYTHING) per the huge warnings everywhere about bears and citations for leaving anything out of your vehicle, bedded down in our zero degree sleeping bags (thank the Lord for those babies!) and slept a few hours before Taido woke us all up at 5:30 to go and view the wildlife in the park. No one wanted to get out of their sleeping bag, even with the temptation of the heat in the van as we drove, but like ripping off an old band-aid, you just have to jump out, throw on your freezing cold jeans and hurry into the van. The early start proved to be a great idea though. Cole spotted a moose almost immediately, which was followed by all kinds of elk and deer, many bison and their sweet little calves and two different black bears. After our drive through the park, we took an early morning hike to Taggart Lake. Parts of the trail were still covered in snow, but most of it was clear. The kids climbed on the boulders along the trail and spotted animal tracks in the mud. Simon fell asleep in his backpack, which is becoming a more usual nap than his bed or car seat. We sat by the lake for a while eating tootsie rolls (thank you Grandmother!) and just taking it all in before heading back to the trailhead parking lot which had been empty when we arrived, but was now beginning to fill up with cars.
As we drove back to our campground, Taido said he was ready to pack up and head on down the road, so we dropped our pop up (we are getting faster and faster at this!), hitched it back on the van (first try this time instead of the usual 5-10 times of Taido backing up the van with me directing), and headed north. We stopped for lunch at Leek’s Marina for some of the best pizza I have ever had. It was about 1pm by now so we were all hungry, but I had read about this pizzeria the day before and was anticipating it from the yummy pictures I had seen. And it met all expectations. Taido and I split a pizza with pesto, artichoke hearts and tomatoes. The kids had the usual boring fare. And we all split garlic cheese bread that was more like a brick oven cheese calzone. It was mmmm good I am telling you. Do stop in there and have some pizza and your last look at the Grand Tetons from the patio eating area. The peaks were working their mojo on Taido. Besides the extensive alpine climbing exhibit at the visitor center, the park film included a bit on climbing the Grand Teton, on how difficult and technical it is. It is a two day climb with lots of gear and ropes. I’m pretty sure you need an ice axe, which one gearhead I know just happens to already own. Leek’s Marina may have been our last stop in the Grand Tetons, but I feel certain we’ll be back, and it will probably be for a destination climb. Let’s just hope that I am parked in campsite #13 this time at Signal Mountain with my lawn chair and my wine glass, four kids graduated from high school and just in time for the Jackson Hole Film Festival.
May 31, 2008
Apgar Village, Montana
Glacier National Park
I have tears in my eyes because they can hardly behold the beauty of this place! How could it possibly be that I have drunk in so much wonder today. Should you ever decide to come here, it is a long road up here to Glacier National Park, but the rewards are rich and plentiful for the trouble you take to get here.
After our wonderful lunch yesterday, we drove through Yellowstone National Park, making stops at various visitor centers and famous sites, but the kids were so tired from getting up early that they slept through most of it. Cole saw more than any of the others but he was begging to play the beloved DS Lite after it had been withheld since sometime before we hit Jackson. I felt it was sacrilegious somehow to let a child play a video game in a national park, so I said he couldn’t play until we got out of Yellowstone. This was of course a mistake because he then began to wait impatiently for our departure from the park. Finally, since he couldn’t play DS, he too fell asleep. They have taken in a lot, those four, so I let it pass. Only Taido and I saw the Yellowstone Canyon and its waterfall that inspired Thomas Moran and many others to paint gorgeous landscapes of the park. And only Taido and I saw the frozen Yellowstone Lake, surrounded by snow and ice. It is still winter in much of Wyoming. There were buds on the trees in Jackson and in the entire valley that led up to Yellowstone, but once we hit the park, winter truly prevailed. The trees looked perfectly dead. There were no flowers or fields of green. Snow was piled up along the park roads and the air chilled us to our bones when we did stop and get out. We spent several hours driving through the park, mostly just because it is on our route between Teton and Glacier. We were fully aware that we were missing most of the magic of Yellowstone by passing through without a hike or a night’s stay, and we may have done our children a great disservice by not helping them experience it better, because they all remarked that it was boring. Except for the northern entrance visitor center animal exhibits. So as we pulled out through the northern entrance and into Montana, Taido said, “Boys, start warming up your thumbs.” It was about 7pm and Taido was hoping to cover as many miles as we could between Yellowstone and Glacier before dark. The boys played DS nonstop, one watching and one playing. And Mary Polly and Simon watched Hello Dolly on my laptop. I swear at one point Simon was dancing in his seat like a waiter from The Harmonian Gardens. So great.
While the kids had media-fest, Taido and I took in our first breaths of Montana air. Lush green valleys and hills dotted with cattle filled the horizon as our rig made the descent from Yellowstone. We dropped in elevation so much that the snow disappeared and all of a sudden it was as though Aslan had come to Montana but not Wyoming. When we started checking weather in towns in Montana, I realized that apparently even though Montana is further north, it is much warmer here because of the drop in elevation. Night lows in the 40s instead of 20s and 30s were going to be a very welcome change.
Around 9:30pm, as the sun was getting low, we pulled through a Walmart Supercenter where I ran in and grabbed my staples, carrots, apples and edamame, as well as a loaf of French bread, a rotisserie chicken and grapes. We had our very late dinner in the van as we drove to the Missouri Headwaters State Park. The sun finally dropped on the horizon as we pulled off the highway, and it was good and dark as we pulled into a campsite a few miles later. We all fell into our bags and immediately went to sleep as soon as we got set up. Simon walked into the camper, threw his blanket on the floor and lied down face first on it. He was so tired that he hardly blinked when I lifted him into his sleeping bag, or when I lifted him with his sleeping bag still around him and handed him to Mary Polly to hold in the van at six this morning. After Taido told me to wake up the kids, he said, “I promise we’ll let them sleep as late as they want tomorrow.” Simon slept all the way to Butte where we stopped for a delicious breakfast at the Great Harvest Bread Company on a welcome tip from the Moon Guide to Montana, a book I picked up at the Valley Bookstore and read intermittently in the car as we drove today. This morning I read the sad history of Butte, Montana and its mining woes before we pulled in and drove its streets that have clearly seen better days. The Great Harvest Bread Company is still in its glory days though. We sampled scones, muffins and breakfast sandwiches, along with wonderful coffee that helped us pop our eyes open a little wider and enjoy the Big Sky Country for the rest of the morning.
We chose a less traveled route to Glacier National Park, because after recording our gas mileage all the way so far we have determined that the rig gets the best mileage at around 60-65 mph anyway, so it doesn’t hurt us on time to take smaller highways. We drove up Highway 83 through Seeley Lake which was gorgeous. I probably said about 100 times, Look at how pretty that is! or It’s just so beautiful! Finally I stopped pointing it out and just enjoyed it. We saw very few other vehicles and passed little civilization. It just amazes me how wide open and gorgeous this state is and that so much of its beauty is hardly even beheld by human eyes. For days I have been marveling at the different wonders God has made in this world, and today I thought a lot about how so much of what He has made is only for Him to see. The pleasure of laying eyes on every beast, every tree, every flower, every waterfall, every mountain crevice in all the miles of forest and hills we drove through today, or that we have driven through since leaving Little Rock, is His. And what’s more, if I am seeing His glory in the glimpses I am having as we drive along, how much more is He able to see the wonderful displays of His glory and power. And though I see now, one day how much more will I see when He is able to show it to me. To think that the wonder of what I have seen today is just a fraction of a glimpse of all that there is makes me excited. It is a lot to take in. And I’m pretty sure the children have missed it. The drive did not impress them nearly as it did us. It kills me to think that they are already beginning to take the incredible scenery for granted, but then again I don’t remember having any great revelations about my family’s great drives through the country when I was their age.
When we arrived at the park around lunchtime, we drove first to find our campsite in Apgar Campground. After much discussing and weighing of very small differences among the choices between all the children, we popped up in site A56. (Cole still holds stubbornly that site A36 is better.) All of the sites are charmingly set in this forest of imposingly tall hemlock, cedar and lodgepole pine trees and just a short walk from Lake McDonald which overlooks the mountains, though they have been shrouded in clouds since our arrival. Still, despite the clouds, the high was 73 degrees F today in Apgar. Downright balmy after where we’ve been, so we were just happy to shed our jackets and jump on our bikes to ride the cutest bike path EVER to Apgar Village, where the visitor center is located, as well as an ice cream shop and several gift shops, one of which is housed in the original one room schoolhouse from this little village’s days gone by. As I rode the path behind Cole and Mary Polly with glimpses of the lake and the mountains to our right and impressive pines on our left, I was so thrilled I started crying and laughing all at once. It is so beautiful that I became downright giddy. And on the way back from the village we had to stop to let six deer cross the trail in front of us, right in front of us. We stopped our bikes and silently watched them slowly walk in front of us as they grazed on the small spring shoots from the trees. This campground just opened a week ago, so we are perhaps the first people these deer have seen in a long time. Our squeals are breaking the long silence that this park has kept through the winter. Somewhere on the road as we came in, a hotel sign said, “Welcome back!” The few who make this place their home all year long seem ready to welcome the throng of visitors of whom we are some of the first.
We came back from our bike ride amazed and delighted, a spirit which, at least for me, penetrated Cole’s fits about collecting firewood and a rain shower falling on our dinner so that we had to crowd under our awning and gobble down our barely still warm quesadillas without guacamole because though I know there is an avocado buried in one of those dang tubs in the van, I couldn’t seem to find it when I collected the things for dinner. Never mind the avocado though. When the crisp air smells richly of pine and spring blooms, and you can ride your bike in the late evening sun through a forest that is just awakening from its winter slumber, so much else seems inconsequential.
May 31, 2008
Glacier National Park
If I could magically give you a gift today via the internet it would be this,
To sit you down on this bench in the Trail of the Cedars,
And to fill all your senses with Glacier National Park.
You would feel the mountain sun touch your face as it trickles through the trees.
The rushing rapids would drown out any other sounds, in the air or in your heart.
You would see with your own eyes trees, mountains, rivers, lakes, snow and spring in the same hour.
And most importantly, you would fill your senses with the intoxicating smell of this place.
And breathe deeply this combination of spring, cedar, pine, damp grass and sun.
If only I could bottle this aroma and take it with me
And send some your way, because I feel certain it would cure whatever ails you.
June 2, 2008
posting tonight from vancouver, british columbia. oh yes, we’ve made it. when i regain my sense of humor, i am sure i will tell you all about today, most especially our new (temporary?) home in an RV park in the city, which i am pretty sure is bordered by a highway, a train track and an airport. wahoo! but they have wifi so here’s what i wrote yesterday on the long sad drive away from glacier…
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Driving from Glacier National Park to who knows where?
We all so enjoyed our time out of the van and in the forest at Glacier National Park. We biked, hiked and explored on the western side of the park. The other side is supposed to be beautiful as well, and we were excited to get over there and see it aboard the free shuttle that runs over the pass, but then we discovered that the shuttle doesn’t start running until July, and the pass is still under 80 feet of snow in some places. Oh well. The road is called Going to the Sun Road. It was built in the 30s to accommodate cars in the park and was such a feat of engineering that it is now a legendary historic landmark. My guidebook described it as a hair-raising, heart-in-your-mouth roller-coaster ride that climbs past weeping waterfalls and vertiginous drop-offs up to the Continental Divide at Logan Pass. Needless to say, I am happy to have to tell my daddy that it was closed instead of that I was too much of a fraidy cat to go up it, even in an eco-friendly shuttle that runs on biodiesel. We drove up as much of it as was open and then walked a couple miles more up it just to see what we could see. The road passes Lake McDonald lodge which is one of three historical lodges in the park. They were open before the road was so in order to stay there before 1930, you had to hike or boat to them. One day I would love to see the other two because we loved seeing the one at Lake McDonald. It just feels like a part of the park. We also walked the Trail of the Cedars, which is beautiful. Then we drove back down and biked some more around our campground. Mary Polly and I went on a late afternoon horseback ride, which is something she has wanted to do for a long time. The boys won out over her last summer and we went white water rafting instead of horseback riding, both being insanely expensive, so she finally got her horseback ride through the forests of the park today. We were the only two people on the 4pm ride, which is one of the many advantages of being here before the park is fully open. Our guide’s name was Ashley and actually she’s only been here a little longer than us. She and a friend arrived three weeks ago from North Carolina to wrangle for the summer in the park. They are actually living over the barn at the Apgar Coral, which is fascinating to me. Most of the wranglers will live over the three different barns in the park, eating their meals together and leading tourists on horses throughout the day. I was thinking as she told us about it that I could definitely think of worse ways to spend a summer. I’m pretty sure Mary Polly was thinking the same thing. She went around and met every single horse when we got back from our ride, and then when we went back to our campsite, she pulled out her paper and drew pictures of horses until dinner was ready. We made cheddar potato soup, which tasted wonderful on our tummies as the temperatures dropped. It was still light when I crawled into bed with Simon and read More, More, More. We could hear the big kids giggling by the campfire, but only one of us knew they were having s’mores without us. Thankfully. Simon has become insanely aware of all times he is being left out of something. We were both worn out though, so we happily went on to sleep. I did heave a little sigh as I thought about leaving Glacier and spending the day back in the van again. But I was ready to go when Taido gave the wake-up call this morning. We took to the road bright and early, uncertain where we would stop again, but knowing that wherever it was, it would be our last night in the states. Lord willing, tomorrow we cross the border.
Credits:
Soundtracks for Montana driving were provided by Bobby and Amy Harrison and Bob Davidson. Thanks guys!
Snacks provided by Sarabeth, Whitney and my mama. We finished up all our treats in Montana. I washed all those tins out and they are sadly empty. Thank you so much for all the yummies!!
June 3, 2008
because it’s late and i am worn out from doing i am not sure what all day. (i just know i worked really hard.) here is a short list of things i am thankful for tonight. play along if you want.
emails from home
a drain to dump my dish water
warm bathrooms
hot showers-um, have you seem that episode of seinfeld where kramer does all his dishes and his cooking in the shower? yeah, that could be me tomorrow. the stalls are pretty big. i think i can fit all the dishes and diapers that need washing, plus simon (who also needs washing) into one stall.
warm laundry room with lots of washers and dryers that take toonies and loonies. (my new words for today)
how hot it is in arkansas (sorry, but it helps me when i am cold and damp all day)
hot coffee (i remember now why it is that when we lived in seattle, we drank coffee all. day. long.)
trader joe’s organic ginger snaps
very warm sleeping bags (mine is calling my name!)
June 3, 2008
It has been several days since I have written anything. It makes me sad that I didn’t write about driving into Washington State back when I was still feeling all lovey about it. The kids cheered and I oohed and ahhed over the green green green everywhere. I remembered that during my very brief stint as a scrapbooker in Seattle, I constantly bought green paper to go with all of my green pictures. Ferns, Douglas firs, rhododendron leaves. The greens were rich, varied and lush beyond anything I had ever experienced before, and when we drove Highway 20 through the North Cascades (our fifth national park), I remembered loving all that green. Even though we were wet and damp when we camped somewhere along that stretch of highway, I took many pictures of green things to show you just how green it all is, but then we arrived in Vancouver, BC on Sunday evening and I have truly been too overwhelmed to relay much of anything, much less resize all my green pictures. At the moment I am not even sure where my camera is. Right now I am sitting in the pop up-oh little pop up, let me count the ways I love thee…it cannot be said enough how thankful I am for this little haven-all the kids are napping right now except Cole. I think that it just feels so good to hunker down in your sleeping bag when it is cold and wet outside. Taido is gone to the school today, adventures in figuring out public transportation, and so the kids and I tried to venture out a little on our own. It has been raining off and on since we hit Washington (normal), but began to rain steadily last night and hasn’t stopped today. Yesterday we had a few glorious moments of sunshine during which I almost got my clothes and diapers dry. Almost. But today it has just been wet. So this morning the kids and I just wanted to find somewhere dry to hang out for a bit. Bookstores are usually really good haunts for us. Even Simon will sit and listen while you read to him, and the big kids just find quiet spots and enjoy the shelves of books we don’t own. Well, as Dorothy might say, Toto, I don’t think we’re in arKansas anymore! We all got yelled at for sitting on the floor and basically thrown out of the shop before anyone finished a book. I am really a wimp when it comes to strangers being rude to me. The manager of this RV park where we’re staying almost made me cry when he asked me as I was registering our camper, why in God’s name I would ever have four children, only to be followed by, why on earth would I take them on vacation with me? But strangely, my feelings of being ruffled and frazzled by the bookstore lady’s being rude to me were trumped by just being sad that we were being moved along from a spot where we would have been not just happily entertained, but also warm and dry for an hour or so. So when Simon wakes up, it will be back to the laundromat for us to wash all our wet towels and then to the pool (to get them wet again) where I will pretend we are not annoying all the senior citizens with loud splashing and playing. We need to enjoy the pool while we have it. Taido meets with his advisor tomorrow and then we are moving on, because even though this RV Park is in no way heaven on earth, it is psycho expensive because of its proximity to the city. We are praying today and tomorrow that God will show us where we are supposed to go on Thursday. I am certain that He has prepared a place for us. And so the adventure of figuring out life in our camper in the Pacific Northwest continues.
June 6, 2008
quickly posting (and comment skimming…thanks for all the love!) on the side of road before we head back to camp…sorry for errors. really, i am at the wheel and blogging at the same time.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Yesterday morning, after a couple of days of swimming, doing laundry and hunkering down in our pop up camper at the RV park in Burnaby, the kids and I decided we would brave the city for a day. We went to the SkyTrain station with Taido early in the morning (after packing down our rig and parking it in a walmart parking lot), and he hopped on one train while we took another. I carried Simon in the backpack, Ben carried the umbrella and Cole carried everything else we needed in a backpack. After we got off the train and walked around downtown Vancouver for a bit, we found a place called Café Crepe, where we had a lovely breakfast of crepes and coffee. Mary Polly and Ben chose dark chocolate, Simon and Cole had cinnamon and sugar, and I had spinach, egg and feta cheese. We all shared bites and I sipped coffee as we sat in the back in the all black leather seating area. We had a large booth all to ourselves to warm up and rest before trying to find the Vancouver Public Library, our next great adventure. Finding the library took a while as I got turned around several times trying to read our little map, but it wasn’t raining so we enjoyed walking and seeing all the people and buildings of downtown. At least, most of us did. I did at one point have a flashback to when I was in high school and we were visiting Chicago while my dad was taking some classes for his doctorate. My mother missed a turn (or two) as she was trying to take my sister, brother and I downtown, and I completely let her have it. As Cole and Mary Polly, in turn, questioned whether or not we would ever find the library, I was feeling very remorseful for my adolescent sassing.
I have taken Mary Polly to downtown Chicago before, but the boys haven’t really been in a big city downtown. Even though we visit Chicago often, I stay with my sister in the suburbs and rarely (read: never) do I have the urge to load up my four kids by myself and take the big brown van into a large city. It is funny what rain, cold and lack of lodgings will push you to do. But we had a wonderful day, even if we were all exhausted from walking. After a couple of hours at the library (which we did eventually find), we met up with Taido and took a bus to Granville Island Public Market where the food choices were overwhelming.
Everything we bought was delicious, especially the strawberry-rhubarb pie a la mode, from A La Mode, a place to which we will definitely be back. In fact, we saw lots more foods on our way out that we all would like to go back and sample. With full bellies and a sleepy baby, we made our way back to the train station where we rode to the van and set about deciding where we were going to lay our heads for the night. Taido had loaded up on books at Regent and said that he could pretty much study anywhere for the next few days until he has to meet with his advisor again next week. So we headed south.
The rain hasn’t stopped, but our spirits are brightened. We are back in the states after a few days of insanity in the big city, happily installed in a lovely, quiet and very green state park. We are relatively near several libraries, a Barnes and Noble and a Trader Joe’s, so what could be better? And though I would love a little sunshine, I was not at all sad to be left this morning as Taido rode off into the green forest on his bike with his books on his back. The boys were climbing the rocks and making all kinds of ruckus as Mary Polly and I sipped coffee and hot cocoa under the awning, discussing how very interesting it is that in all the movies she has watched so far during various drives, there is always at least a little romance. That just confuses me, she says.
June 7, 2008
here’s a short list of things we are going to have to break simon of when we return to our normal life:
dragging his stuffed dog through the mud all day
sleeping with wet, muddy stuffed dog
having a little hot cocoa in his milk every morning
spitting, yes spitting (the big boys are to blame for this one)
never bathing (he’s had one bath since we left home)
sleeping with his parents
eating marshmallows before bed
eating all of his meals with a stick, off the ground or while walking around
having the almost constant attention of three older siblings who are not in school
though there may be moments that i doubt whether or not we are “living the dream,” simon is definitely convinced he is in heaven.
he is in for a rude awakening when in seven days we get to stay in a REAL HOUSE for a whole WEEK, thanks to my mother-in-law who is graciously trading in some of her vacation rental points for us to experience the TOTAL LUXURY that is being out of the rain all day long AND access to constant baths.
June 8, 2008
Saturday evening, June 7, 2008
In the pop up at Larabee State Park.
The big kids are enjoying the novelty of other children since our campground has filled up for the weekend, Simon is sleeping, Taido is reading and it is not raining. All is well in the world, for the moment. It’s amazing how the stop of the drip drip drip can lift your heart. It rained hard all day and all night on Thursday and through most of Friday. The depressing downpour was made more exaggerated by the arrival of a pick-up truck late Thursday night, out of which piled a couple and their four dogs, all of whom seemed to have been smoking something not readily available at your neighborhood grocer. The couple seemed to be having some sort of rather loud altercation while their dogs chased a raccoon. Taido and I both woke up and waited for the noise to die down. The whole time they were screaming in the night I was consumed with two thoughts, the first, more of a prayer actually, was my hoping that nothing like this occurs the week that Taido leaves to go backpacking and my mother and I are camping alone with the kids. And the second was this: that at some point these people and their pack of dogs would have to calm down and go to bed and however could they manage it when they were all going to be soaking wet. They were all running all over the campground (because the shouts and barks were coming from all directions) and so they were most certainly getting drenched to their bones and it just made me shiver in my bag to think about it. Eventually though, they did calm down and presumably went to sleep, not in a tent, but in the back of their pick-up truck which, I discovered the next morning, was covered with an old tarp. The ranger came rolling by at about 10am, I thought to discuss the noise, but maybe just to ask for their campsite fees or to ask that they get their pack of dogs on leashes, I’m not sure which. But, whatever it was, it was apparently not to their liking, because as soon as he pulled away, they headed out. To who knows where and into what sad events, I will never know. I suppose they are living much like us in that they are just headed from place to place, figuring it out as they go, unsure of where they will lay their heads or from where their next meal is coming. I have thought a lot about people who live this way, without a pop up camper, and without a house in Arkansas to go back home to at the end of the summer, and without a credit card to put groceries on or even a meal at a restaurant when they need a break from cooking in the rain. The kids and I spent pretty much all day Thursday and Friday dodging the rain, a few hours at the Laundromat, two more at Barnes and Noble, a stop at an old town hall that has been converted into a museum that chronicles the history of logging in old photographs, another stop at the library (where Taido is spending his time) and then a good three hours or so in a rather small, but precious children’s museum. I sat by the window at the children’s museum, weighing between going back out into the falling rain or continuing to allow my big boys to overrun the preschoolers at the museum for another half hour or so. A young girl came by the museum while I was there and asked the attendant if she could use the restroom. No, was the answer to this girl who I presumed was homeless by her appearance. Try the library, the attendant said. Taido had already told me that the library was a hangout for the homeless and that there were signs posted around the reading area warning that sleeping is not allowed. I can absolutely understand how one could go into a warm, dry library and fall asleep. I can also understand the dilemma of needing a public restroom. There was no bathroom at the Laundromat so we had to walk down the street to the grocery store twice for bathroom trips. But for the most part, even though I think we look a bit like vagabonds, the children and I are welcomed to the places we go. I’m not sure how many more times the lady at the museum would let us walk through the logging exhibit, but she was certainly nice to us our first time in. She even showed me where the elevator was in case I didn’t want to carry Simon in the backpack up all the stairs to where there was a collection of old dolls and clocks. I have wondered at what point we will actually look (and smell) homeless this summer. The jacket I am wearing is very nice, but surely it can’t look chic all summer. Especially since I never take it off. Simon has become so accustomed to seeing me with my hat on that he hands it to me to put on in the morning if it’s fallen off during the night. (He has always done this with my glasses.)
This week I have really wanted to go to church. It is such a part of who I am that I miss it. I want to hear the music. And feel the Holy Spirit among the people of God. But I have to say that I am a little nervous. And that I would be even at home, where we say it doesn’t matter what you wear. That you can dress down on Sunday, because no one cares what you wear at our church. And I love it that I can wear jeans. But let’s be honest. My jeans are cute, or at least they are clean. My children aren’t usually six inches in mud and smelling like campfire when they show up on Sunday morning. Would I really show up at church in my camp clothes, hiking boots, with dirty hair and no shower? And more importantly, would I welcome someone who did? Well tomorrow we have the gift of anonymity at least. Still with six of us, it will be hard to slip in and out, quietly enjoying the music on the back row. If I am very lucky, maybe there will be a homeless person I can sit next to.
June 9, 2008
Sunday afternoon, June 8, 2008
When we arrived at Larrabee State Park on Wednesday, we made the usual drive through the campground to select our campsite. There are a couple of non-negotiables that we are always looking for in a campsite. The potential temporary home must be deep enough to hold our rather long rig (B)ig (M)ongo (V)an plus pop up camper and also relatively level, as the pop up is difficult to dislodge from the van’s hitch on a slope, plus, hello, the sleeping is better. After these two details of great importance, we chose our current campsite based on its proximity to this giant rock. We knew that the kids would enjoy it and the smaller brother and sister rocks around its base. The kids were barely out of the van before they were climbing on it, or at least around it. Cole pretty much immediately maneuvered his way to the top, and then proceeded to gloat over the other siblings. For two days, Taido and I watched while Ben and Mary Polly (and even Simon) tried to make their way up the big rock. Mary Polly spent a considerable amount of time pouting over her failed attempts to conquer it. Ben and Simon became content to play on the smaller rocks around the bottom.
On Friday, something changed. Other campers started rolling into the campground and filling it up for the weekend. Kids began to come from all over to the big rock like a magnet. Mary Polly commented that the rock was helping her to make friends. We are very popular because of this big rock, I heard her say to a little girl. At one point on Friday evening when the sun finally decided to mercifully shine for a couple of hours, Cole was on top of the rock while an entire circle of kids formed around the bottom, watching him in awe. Saturday afternoon brought more sun and more kids. I suppose the chance to show off to other kids, or the feeling of the big rock’s being our home turf, or some other force I can’t explain, finally enabled Ben and Mary Polly to conquer their fears and the rock. They both managed to make it to the top, one right after the other, with Taido and Cole spotting the hand holds for them. Soon they were scrambling up and down it like they had never once been afraid of it. Mary Polly said at dinner, I feel like the big rock is my friend now. And after dinner, she wanted to take a blanket to the top of it to sit on. Before the weekend was over, they had even taught many other kids how to get up the big rock, which at first seems insurmountable. At one point, when I looked up at the top, I felt like the number of kids atop the rock was most certainly unsafe and wondered if somehow we would be liable by our proximity if a child toppled off. No one ever did though. Of course Simon will have to wait a few years before he will get a real chance to climb it, but everyone else will certainly lament the loss of such a great toy when we leave tomorrow for our next temporary home. Where will it be? Somewhere close to Regent College? Or at least to a SkyTrain station? Will there be a giant rock or some other new and exciting challenge to face? Will there be crazy people in pick-up trucks? And most importantly, will there be sunshine? Only God knows. Thank goodness someone does.
June 11, 2008
Monday afternoon, June 9, 2008
Riding shotgun as we sit in line to cross into Canada
Well, we said goodbye in the rain to Larrabee State Park. Yesterday was lovely, and perhaps we should have gone on and packed up while still having the chance to do it dry, but I suppose we were meant to tuck those pop up panels wet, again. Happily, Cole and I are getting quite fast at this. He cranks the camper down while I tuck the canvas. Usually by this time, Simon is buckled in his car seat and Taido is strapping bikes on the back of the van. It was nice to sleep five nights in the same place, without having to take down anything, but it was definitely time. We are ready for new territory.
Yesterday morning we tried to go to church. We had one all picked out. We even gave ourselves an hour to find it, but an hour and 20 minutes after we left camp, we were still circling the same block where it was supposed to be, but just was not. We went back to the exact same spot twice, once on our own following the map and then one more time following a Google map. Alas, it was not to be. We still don’t know where Northlake Community Church is, but the miracle of the morning is that I did not throw a fit. And the children, after driving around all morning looking for a church, also did not throw a fit. We went back to the spot in a parking lot where we had gotten a map via internet and I started looking for other places for us to go. Places with later services. I finally found this church that had a 5 pm service. It looked a little different, but Taido said he was willing to give it a go. So, I sent the pastor an email warning him that we had four kids (I didn’t want to totally overwhelm their childcare situation) and we headed to REI. Because we also worship gear, apparently. Actually, it was strange how little we both felt like we needed. I had this same feeling on Saturday morning when we went to the Bellingham Farmers’ Market, which is not really a farmers’ market (there were a couple of farmers) but more of an artisans’ market. And while I can certainly appreciate, under the right circumstances, a crafty market, it was hard not to just feel like the whole place was mostly covered up with junk nobody needs. Nice junk. But still, just stuff. Even if I wanted something or thought something was really pretty, where would I put it? The van is full enough as it is and I’m not wearing anything but what I have on all summer, or a slight variation of what I have on. Anyway, we did get Simon a pair of wool socks at REI, because wool socks really are necessary in the constant wet and cold, maybe not necessary, but very helpful. And the rest of us have them, so it just seems right that he should too. And Mary Polly spent the rest of her money on a small camp side table. She was determined to have it, saying that she and Simon could sit at it the rest of the summer, since Simon has so much trouble sitting at the camp picnic tables without spilling food all over the place because the benches are so far from the table. It was really kind of sweet. So, with table in tow, we headed back to camp to fix lunch. The campground had cleared out by the time we returned. All our new friends are gone! We had steak at the kids’ begging for the first time on our trip, which Taido had marinated and grilled to perfection. Plus potatoes, onions and pencil thin asparagus. I love those teeny tiny asparagus.
Then at 4 we left to try to make the 5pm service at MissioDei, which is a new church that meets at a house, with the childcare on the second floor. There would be no sneaking in and out. But instead, we were like a third of those in attendance. We were refreshed with music, scripture reading, teaching, discussion, communion and even a meal. The kids loved the gal who was in charge of childcare, especially since the four of them made up the entire children’s program for the night. I asked the girl how many she usually had and she said, well sometimes, we have about two. Sweet. We doubled the usual average. It was nice just to be in a home for the evening, and of course they had to welcome us in and ask us what we were doing all the way up here from Arkansas and where were we living, always fun to explain about the pop up, you know. All in all, we were all so glad we went and it was great to pull back up to our camper and not have to cook, but just change into pj’s and read The Penderwicks on Gardam Street and fall asleep feeling like yes, it was Sunday today and tomorrow starts a new week.
Now we are driving in the POURING DOWN RAIN to another campground. We are stuck in a lot of traffic, but who cares you know because I am in NO hurry to get out of the van in this rain. Taido went back to the library this morning and the kids and I sat in the camper listening to the rain, trying to stay warm and reading the Penderwicks. I have almost thawed out now, but not quite, so a little longer in the car will be just fine with me. Just fine. Five more days until we get to check into our house, but who’s counting?
June 11, 2008
written late last night in the pop up
Yesterday when we arrived here at our Canadian Provincial Park, it was raining. It was raining as we drove the rather lengthy and, significantly for the biker, all uphill winding road to our campground. The park was immediately serene in its greenness. Mossy trees draping across the lonely road. Very lonely. We saw no one until we finally found the campground and ran into a park attendant who asked us if we were bringing the sunshine. She was dripping wet from cleaning up the weekend trash, I suppose. The reservation board was full with all the activity from the previous weekend. Clearly, this is a popular destination. Except on rainy Monday nights. We are one of about 4 campers in a park with over 400 sites. We chose our site because it is right across from the washrooms (as they call them in Canada) and a puddled playground. Four of us sat in the van until Taido and Cole had the camper up. Then we switched from sitting in the van to sitting in the camper. It was at this point that I realized that Ben was sick. He had been moaning about not feeling great all day, and had been a bit whiny, but I had convinced myself that he was just tired. Now it was time to dig out the thermometer and the advil and to tuck him into his sleeping bag, all of which I did before preparing dinner. Pre-made sushi and frozen gyozas from Trader Joe’s. Ben barely ate anything, while everyone else scarfed down the food and fell into beds. Or bags. The view from our camper really is amazingly lovely, I told myself as I was snuggling with Ben. If only the rain would stop. If only we weren’t soooo cold. Just enjoy the beautiful view from inside this great camper, I kept telling myself. You have to endure the cold and the rain to experience how enchanting it is. Part of its enchantment is its emptiness and it wouldn’t be so empty if the weather were perfect. There are thoughts I was chanting to myself as we were going to sleep. Simon took a long time to settle down after a long nap in the car, so Taido and I took turns patting him and wondering if the rain would ever stop. Taido took forever packing his things into a garbage bag before loading them into his backpack for the long morning ride that we felt would very likely be in the rain. He was to leave very early in order to make his train from here and meet his adviser on time.
When he got up and left this morning, it was eerily quiet. No trains or cars like last week. I let myself have a weensy moment of panic before I spent a long time thanking God that it wasn’t raining. Somehow, miraculously it seemed, the rain had stopped sometime early this morning. I had heard the drips on the camper all night long, and the puddles were everywhere, but now it had stopped. Just in time for Taido to ride away. And now that he had left, I pondered how the five of us were going to spend our day. I had already decided that if it was raining we were heading to town to find a Laundromat, but since it wasn’t raining and I wasn’t excited about a) driving into town to find said Laundromat or b) being in a Laundromat again with four children, I gave all my fears to God about being like the only people in this giant park and told myself that we would stay here as long as it wasn’t raining, and then I went back to sleep. When I am in my sleeping bag in the morning, just before I get up and after I have poked my head out to see if it is light, I think, right now, I am the warmest and driest I will be all day long. I just want to enjoy it a few more minutes. The good thing is that I think we all feel that way, so usually it is my bladder that finally drags me out and not another person. Then I have time to make coffee and sometimes even read a bit before everyone else rouses.
Cole and Mary Polly helped me make breakfast and then we all got back in our bags and listened to the rest of The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, because we were so very cold and so very near the end. We finished it and then we sat in our bags some more and talked about which characters we are most like. I decided that I used to be more like Jane, but being a mother has made me more like Rosalind, which isn’t necessarily bad, but I wondered if I haven’t suppressed a little Jane-ness in me in order to take care of the responsibilities of Rosalind. For example, as I think about going to town tomorrow, I think of it in these terms…it will be $10 in gas to get there and back, about the same or a little more to do the laundry, then at least $30 for lunch, because we will eat in town before coming back, plus a stop at the grocery store ($50 more) and then incidentals like parking or coffee ($10 again?), so the entire trip into town will be close to $100 before we are done and so maybe we should just stay at camp because besides the $24 per day campsite fee we have already paid, it is free to stay in camp. Now of course, if I didn’t think like this at all, we would have completely run out of money already on eating in places that are warm and dry or hotel rooms or some other such nonsense, but perhaps a little more of Jane’s carelessness would help to make the day more fun tomorrow, and maybe I could not be so insanely aware of how much every minute of our life is costing us. I’m sorry if you have no idea what I am talking about because you don’t know who Rosalind and Jane are, but really, that should just be incentive to go get the Penderwick books and read them yourself, even if you are not a child, because couldn’t we all use a little more childlike-ness?
So after my philosophy lesson, I decided that maybe the kids would be okay for a few minutes while I ran to the washroom and tried to take a shower. It had been exactly one week since we left the city RV park, and therefore, since I had showered, and so I was feeling pretty desperate. The grease was beginning to burn my eyes. Gross, I know. But the showers at campgrounds are really uninviting. For one, the bathrooms are not heated. And I am pretty sure that I have mentioned that I am rarely taking off my hat and coat, much less the rest of my clothes. And my socks! Goodness gracious, to take off my socks was really going to kill me. Nevertheless, I was desperate and I thought that it would not kill me. In fact a hot shower, which by the way, Taido had already checked the showers and promised me that they were hot, might just warm me up a bit. So I threatened the kids with their lives to get along, took all my things over to the washroom, took off my clothes until I was so cold that I was nearly in tears, and then turned on the water. I know what you’re thinking. Why didn’t I turn on the water before I took off all my clothes? Well, because first of all I was afraid that there might be a limited amount of hot water available and if so, I planned to use ALL of it to get warm, and secondly, it already feels like everything we own is wet and I couldn’t stand to accidentally get more of my clothes wet while checking the water. So of course, I turned on freezing cold water, and had to hit it back on like four times (the showers are like those water saving faucets that you have to keep turning on because they only run for a little while and then they slowly stop running and then you have to start them again.) After several hits of freezing cold water to the arm, I decided it wasn’t ever getting warm, so I wrapped myself up in my towel, which by the way is slightly damp and mildew-y, and then threw my clothes back on. And I was amazed at how the same clothes that were earlier not keeping me warm now felt like wonderful cozy electric blankets. I went back over to the camper, from which I could hear the kids being crazy loud like fighting and ordered everyone out to go for a walk. Oh, I haven’t even mentioned that somewhere in the morning both Cole and Mary Polly had gone over, at different points, to the playground to check the status of its play-ability, with the puddles and all, and BOTH had come back to camp with their backsides completely wet and covered in mud from falling in the exact same place and off the exact same piece of equipment, flat on their backs, sealing what we will be doing tomorrow to pass the time. Anyway, all of us took our dirty bodies, but with clean-ish clothes, to set out to find the trail that leads to the lake. I figured a walk and wearing Simon would have to eventually warm me up, and I was right. We found the trail and enjoyed getting muddy again throwing sticks and rocks into the lake. By the time we came back, we were all hungry for lunch and Simon and Ben were ready for naps, Ben because he was running fever again and Simon because it was just time. I settled them into their bags and started heating water for dishes.
Besides setting up and taking down the camper, doing the dishes is the main camp chore that we have taught the kids. They have an assembly line where one washes, one rinses and one dries. They usually gripe about doing it, yell at one another and manage to get soaking wet while they are doing it, but I figure maybe by the end of the summer they will have the kinks worked out. I told Ben I would do his part today since he was going to bed and by the time I got the water heated I was amazed to see that the playground had finally drained off enough of the puddles for Cole and Mary Polly to be playing on it, together, which is a small miracle. I was so delighted that I decided I would just do the dishes myself and besides, that way no one would get any wetter. To my TOTAL AMAZEMENT, I had only washed a few plates before Cole and Mary Polly came running over to help. Mary Polly said, Mama, you’re not supposed to be doing the dishes, that’s our job! I told them I didn’t mind. And then they offered to help anyway. They were just so glad I was washing, which is the dreaded position in the line up. As we washed the dishes and chatted away, I tried to scrape my jaw off the ground from my shock. Who were these children? It only lasted a little while. After Ben and Simon got up later, there was an altercation about drawing materials that threatened to erase from my memory the dish washing episode, but it was beautiful while it lasted.
And before I knew it, here came Taido riding back into camp in time for dinner. One of my strongest memories about living in the Pacific Northwest is that with the damp cloud cover, it feels like about 8 in the morning, all day long. I never know what time it is. I remember looking at the clock when we lived here and I had three toddlers and feeling as though the days were just crawling along, and though there are moments when it seems as though we are just sitting around waiting for something (the sun, perhaps), the days have been pleasantly passing by.
June 11, 2008
lots of scope for the imagination
The good thing about camping in what is not officially, but practically a rainforest is that it is like being in nature’s Emerald City. The green moss floor, the evergreen canopy and the mammoth ferns combine to create a sort of green fairy land. The bad thing about camping in a rainforest is, well, all that rain. So we have our piles of muddy clothes (and one very smelly stuffed dog) and are headed back into town to find a quiet place for Taido to study and a Laundromat for the rest of us. Ben seems to be feeling better this morning, which is a great relief. And even though it is raining, I was reminded by Anne Shirley (we started Anne of Green Gables last night) that it is impossible to be in the depths of despair in the morning. The passage where Anne explains that she likes all sorts of mornings, sunny and rainy, was fresh in my mind as we woke up to the drip drip drip, and the memory that the fact that it gets light at all is evidence that the sun has come up which is God’s mercy, even if I can’t feel it on my face.
June 13, 2008
I finished a book this morning that I have been slowly reading since just before I left home. It’s called Finding Our Way Again. Isn’t that a great title? It’s about restoring to our lives some of the ancient traditions of faith that have given both sanity and sacredness to so many who have gone before us. The best bit is that the entire book is an introduction to a coming series which will write about each one of these traditions individually. And the really best bit is that Phyllis Tickle is the editor of the entire series, which for me, assures that it will be good. I have just in the last year or so been introduced to her writing and I find reading her to be like coming home. Her writing draws me in like the campfire draws the children. They are practically climbing into it to feel its warmth as they hover around its edges. Phyllis Tickle’s writings turn me into that hovering, excited child, both her autobiographical writing and her spiritual writing…and there is lots of crossover between the two, which is probably why I love her so much. I so appreciate the art of seeing the sacred in the everyday. To have eyes to see the miracles that are constantly around us is a skill that I hope to one day practice as well as Ms. Tickle does.
So, the great thing about reading the book to the series that is actually just an introduction is that there is no pressure. Soon to come will be all the teaching on all the different practices, right? So for now, as I read this introduction, I am free to just drink in the hope and anticipation of the series to come. And therefore to enjoy the stories, the quotes from saints of old, the history of the threefold ancient way (I particularly enjoyed this part) and general reasoning for the reintroduction of such practices into our hearts, minds and souls. But I was convinced before I ever began this book that these practices (in particular, fixed-hour prayer, Sabbath, fasting, communion, pilgrimage, the observance of sacred seasons and giving) are habits we all desperately need in our lives. About 10 years ago, I read Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline for the first time. I was completely enraptured by this book, to the point of distraction. I immediately went about doing exactly what Richard Foster says you shouldn’t do which is to try to master all the spiritual disciplines at once and to the purpose of being able to say that you have mastered them, which is pride, which is the greatest stumbling block one can have in a faith journey. So after driving myself a bit batty, I also had toddlers, so I am to be forgiven for all lapses in sound thinking, I RE-read Celebration of Discipline and set about to digesting about one chapter a year…or less. I have since had many conversations with people who were reading Celebration of Discipline and having similar experiences to mine, where they were overwhelmed and not sure where to start or they were trying to do the whole book at once. I still think that this book is an incredible classic and should be read over and over again, slowly, deliberately, in groups and families and all sorts of communities, but I am also super excited about a new series that is going to address one discipline at a time. I imagine that to be able to focus one’s attention and energy in the reading of an entire book on one practice will be like a yoga class just on breathing. At first you are like, What! A whole hour just on breathing? And then when it’s over you’re like MORE MORE MORE, because you didn’t realize how desperately your body needed to just breathe.
The author of Finding Our Way Again writes that much of what the series will address is restoring a kind of sacred normalcy to the rhythms of life. That sounds so appealing to me. Faith isn’t a to-do list. It’s a way of life.
As I have read through this book, I have been personally struck by a couple of things. The first is how much I am longing for the practices that are communal (even though I am not naturally a super social person), which makes me more excited for the books in the series on these particular practices. I have encountered less writing on these disciplines (an entire book on communion!) than on the more inward disciplines. The second realization I have had is that I have set myself up this summer, though not intentionally, to naturally experience a lot of the more inward disciplines. Simplicity, solitude, silence, prayer. With so much stripped away, I am naturally experiencing these more. Take simplicity for example, I feel that over the years I have truly worked towards the discipline of simplicity. Richard Foster wrote an entire book on simplicity (Freedom of Simplicity) that is very practical and was an immense help to me in finding my way through this discipline without constantly beating myself up. John Piper’s teachings on simplicity have been equally influential for me. And reading The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne this spring has further renewed and refined my desire to make my life simpler. And also the lives of my children, who have to fight more than I do, the constant social demands to both do and acquire more. Just before we left, I was cleaning out my house (to get ready to pack and to make space for a friend to stay there) and I was trying to purge everywhere, but especially with clothing. I took piles and piles of clothes out, but still there were full closets when I left. But after two weeks of camping, my clothing needs have naturally simplified themselves. I brought more than I could possibly use while we are camping, and I certainly brought entirely too many tank tops and short sleeved items. Shockingly, I even brought skirts. And though I just might put on a skirt when we check into our house (very soon!), I certainly didn’t need three or four. But I didn’t have to do any work to come to this point of simplicity. It has just been a natural consequence or benefit of the life we are currently living. All those years of trying to simplify when all I really needed to do was to move into a pop-up camper! Silence and solitude have been equally enacted upon me much the same way. I am not naturally inclined to talk to strangers (though I been braver than usual lately, necessity makes us grow!) and I am without my friends and family, and (much to those same friends and family’s chagrin) without a cell phone or even cell coverage, in many circumstances. So the stage was naturally set for me when I reached the third section of this book on finding our way, when the author introduces the ancient threefold way, to experience the first of the three which is katharsis. The author describes katharsis as the gate through which we enter the ancient way and its practices. I remember as we drove the very lonely roads of Wyoming that Taido said, I would think that if you grew up here, you would have to be the kind of person who was pretty comfortable with yourself. In a place so desolate, you would have to face your demons, and you’d be free from the influences of a lot of the world, though I fear TV is quickly reducing the good that isolation can do for a person and perhaps internet too, because just think, dear reader, that I have a voice even as I am writing this, which lessens my aloneness in the rainforests of British Columbia. But I digress. Katharsis is a sort of purging of the soul, which is simply easier to focus on without the distractions of phone or social engagements of any kind, and so I hope that being far away in Canada will help me move through katharsis and on (but not leaving katharsis behind, because you take each practice with you into the next phase) to fotosis and then all ready for theosis when I come home. Because that third one involves other people. As I read through the section on theosis at the campground yesterday, I looked up at Cole for a minute (he was swinging his light saber at Ben and Simon) and wondered if he might be ready for the threefold ancient way. It was a fleeting thought. Though he might understand it, I am pretty sure you need to actually desire the effects in your life to begin to practice it. Oh well. That is something to pray about. Handy that I already have the next book in the series, In Constant Prayer.
June 14, 2008
my love affair with canada began with fresh dairy products, and other joys
After spending most of Wednesday messing with our errands in town, the kids and I stayed around camp all day again on Thursday. It had rained off and on all day on Wednesday, so it was a welcome relief to have a mostly dry day yesterday, and the kids spent the day much like Tuesday. Getting muddy, getting cold, changing clothes and listening to me read, then getting muddy and cold again. They seemed adjusted to the weather more than me. I wore all my layers all day, as I sat in my chair, reading and watching them come and go. The fascination of the day was that a middle school group came and camped all around us (instead of in the 375 sites in the park that are not right next to us), providing lots to watch and even a little interaction. Cole lent out a couple of his light sabers and had some duels. The most amazing thing I saw from my bundled up state was that several of the middle schoolers changed into their bathing suits and went down to the lake, presumably to swim. We heard tales of a couple of kids actually getting in, but only for a second, but still, the fact that they were even wearing such little clothing in this weather was unfathomable to me. Equally shocking was that people paraded all day in and out of the concentration camp-like showers. And actually showered in them! I haven’t mentioned that I actually revisited the horrifying shower experience because we did eventually discover one that was lukewarm, but it was so not enough warmth to stave of the constant drafts of freezing that I cried through the entire experience and though I was later glad to be clean, I am sure I could not ever repeat the traumatizing event. But these people…they hadn’t even been out of civilization for 24 hours and here they were voluntarily subjecting themselves to such torture. I suppose what the gal at Trader Joes’s said to me last week was true…she had noticed my southern accent and asked me what I was doing up here. When our conversation turned to the weather, she said, Yeah, I noticed your hat. This is tank top weather for us! I’m sure the middle schoolers had a laugh or two at us in our bundles.
Even though we had enjoyed our day at camp with the middle schoolers and the slightly less muddy playground, I had been reading though the glut of brochures that I picked up at the local library and there was one that had more than caught my eye. It was the Circle Farm Tours. Need I even explain the stirrings in my heart that occurred when I found this set of brochures that describe self-guided driving tours to local farms. There are six brochures! One for each of the surrounding areas! After reading, nay savoring, each description of each farm, I decided that today that we would tour farms in and around Abbotsford, which every Chino will gladly tell you would happily make their new home. This town is nearly perfect, I assure you. What else could you possibly need in life besides a town full of local farms and yoga studios? If you are looking for a new place to live, go ahead and put Bellingham, Washington and Abbotsford, British Columbia on your list of places to check out. We began our tour in historic downtown Abbotsford at a bakery. The kids all chose cookies for breakfast, except Mary Polly who had a muffin, because cookies are too sweet for breakfast. I swear she said that. We also bought a few more treats for the road and then headed on to stop number one, Birchwood Dairy. The kids topped off their breakfast with ice cream cones, filled with ice cream that was made fresh right there. We got to visit the cows from which it was made, as well as a horse and some donkeys. I bought yogurt, of course. I love yogurt and am super fascinated with the process of making this incredibly healthy food. Some of you may remember that I have tried my hand at making it myself, on several occasions, actually. The only reason I would make it is that we do not have access to places as wonderful, as glorious as the dairy farms we visited today. My black raspberry yogurt was other worldly I tell you. Then, just to make the dairy seem even more like heaven, the sun came out while we were eating our ice cream and yogurt, outside at the picnic tables. The whole scene was so beautiful with the farmland all around and a little playground area for the kids. And the ladies at the dairy were so nice to us. We watched several people come and eat lunch at the little farm store, which also serves sandwiches. The kids were so happy playing that I pulled out my computer and wrote about the book I’d been reading. It was like a little breath of lovely. After I wrote for a while and they played a bit longer, we all loaded up and headed to stop number two. Some fighting on the way to the Fraser River Trout Hatchery caused Cole to miss stop number two, which was fine with him, so he sat in the van while the rest of us went to learn about trout. We learned about all the different kinds of trout, trout habitats, trout spawning and trout babies (or “fry”). I was afraid that the kids might be bored, but the exhibits were really neat. Plus there were several different ponds filled where you could watch the trout swim, which totally thrilled Simon. We got to see several great white sturgeon. I had no idea how big they are. Really big, and they can live to be more than 100 years old. Isn’t that amazing? They had this book that I read to the kids called Tale of a Great White Fish that I loved. And it is set in the Fraser River, which we were driving around all day. It is about the changes that have occurred to the sturgeon’s habitat over its long life, which has Mary Polly talking about littering and development like a member of the Green Party. Love it. And if all the free exhibits weren’t enough, the hatchery was having some sort of reception that was coming to an end, so one of the ladies who worked there invited us to share in the leftovers. So we had yummy sandwiches, fruit and veggies for lunch. For free. We even took some to Cole, who was very appreciative after his hour in the van reading. He was in a much better mood as we drove to our next stop which was a strawberry farm that does not yet have strawberries. Too much rain and cold, to which we can testify. Next we drove past millions of not yet ripe raspberry bushes to get to a bee farm, where we sampled all different kinds of honey and bought our favorite, raspberry honey to take back to camp with us. Rossdown Farm Market was next, where we didn’t buy anything but I enjoyed talking to the owner who told me that her husband had just been visiting in Arkansas to learn about chickens, which they raise and sell in their market. She was so kind, and gave me some ideas for fun places to go with the kids in the area and I really could have visited with her all day but my kids were starting to go positively wild in the place so we moved on. We passed by this beautiful nursery with the most lovely gardens, and it was on our stop list, but I just didn’t think the kids were going to respect the flowers, especially Simon at this point. We had one stop left on our list. It was getting late and I wasn’t sure when Taido wanted us to pick him up from the library, since he can’t call me. So many people had been so nice to us today, that I thought maybe we should stop while we were ahead and skip the last stop, plus Simon was falling asleep. And then I made a wrong turn down a dirt road that about sealed the deal, but something was just pulling me towards the idea of visiting a goat dairy farm. So we persevered and made it to the absolutely enchanting Goats’ Pride Dairy at McLennan Creek. I am so happy we didn’t miss this lovely experience. The lady at the goat farm told us all about the whole process. She introduced us to all the different goats…baby goats, five month olds, yearlings and those ready for milking. She let us peek in at what was being made today, yogurt. She showed us the apple trees, pear trees, walnut trees, chickens, pigs, dogs and cats in addition to goats and she even directed us towards a walk to a stream where salmon have spawned and their babies are swimming and along which grows delicate watercress. We stayed over an hour seeing everything, and then Simon woke up and the kids went all around again, showing him everything. We bought two different kinds of cheese and some yogurt, all fresh, all made right there with organic goats’ milk. Everyone said it was their favorite stop, and we loved it even more when we later ate the cheese that was so delectable we are contriving ways to go back. We said goodbye to the sweet goats and drove back to the library to pick up Taido, who was just finishing up. It was such a lovely day that now I want to do the other five circle farm tours, though I can’t imagine we could enjoy a group of farms as much as we did those in Abbotsford. It is hard to say if I am more giddy tonight because of our delightful day or at the prospect of getting to check into the house tomorrow! It feels like Christmas. I’m sure I won’t be able to sleep a wink for all the excitement.
June 15, 2008
I was remembering today a conversation that I overheard in a crowded train compartment from Florence to Venice when Taido and I were in Italy a few years ago. We had just spent several days in Florence that I had spent years carefully planning, seeing paintings and sculptures that I had only dreamed I might ever lay eyes on. Every moment had been perfect, with glorious meals in between visits to museums. We had walked and walked through the city, making friends with its sacred passageways and reveling in the delight of being together in such a place. So, it was with some horror that I listened to a several young people discuss their time in Florence with less enthusiasm than I had for this beloved city. One girl in particular expressed her disappointment in the city with complete ignorance of the fact that the jury is already out on whether or not Florence is one of the most magnificent places on earth, and therefore her opinions were not in any way adding to or taking away from Florence’s reputation, but rather only revealing a lack of ability to see beauty on her own part. However, she later confessed that she hadn’t really seen much of Florence while she was there. She had been traveling through Europe for a while, as young people do, with plenty of time, but not much money. And she had been so thrilled to discover that her hostel in Florence had free internet access that she could hardly tear herself away from being able to email and chat with friends to actually get out and see the city of Florence itself, and the weather had been rainy and cold, so it was much easier to stay in. I was sad for her that getting to travel so much had made her take Florence for granted, and again, horrified that she neglected the delights of the Uffizi for free internet access. But today, when I remembered that conversation afresh, I had a weensy bit more understanding for this poor girl. Because though the wonders and thrills of the city of Vancouver are just outside my doorstep, I have a bathtub! How could anything be better than a bathtub today? The sun is shining and I can see the waterfront from the upstairs window. I watched the sun set over it as I read to the children last night in their cozy upstairs rooms.
I don’t want to forget how wonderful are some of the luxurious pleasures that have been bestowed upon me in the last 12 hours. Among them are putting my cheek to a pillow that felt neither damp nor cold. Drinking my coffee out of a ceramic cup, the edges of which feel so good to my lips that I can’t understand how I have drunk so many times before from mugs without experiencing the wonder of how that little bit of pottery feels. I sat in bed this morning, propped up on big puffy pillows and read a chapter from a book. That may sound mundane, but friends, there are so many luxuries contained within that small sentence that you cannot possibly see, like the fact that I wasn’t wearing two coats, a hat and lots of long underwear. We had lasagna last night that we baked in an oven. And need I even mention all the bathing, the smell of my new bar of green tea soap, the washing of clothes (and blankets and sleeping bags), the cleaning out of the van and re-organizing of all the jumbled up tubs. We found all the things that have been lost to us for weeks. There are three bedrooms, one of which Mary Polly is having all to herself, while the three boys happily share. She spent hours in the organizing or her possessions last night, making her room just perfect. She got up and made not only her own bed this morning, but also the boys’ beds, to preserve the charm of the upstairs bedrooms.
All these gifts would be enough, really. More than enough. But as God’s grace is lavish, the house procured for us by my mother-in-law for this week just happens to be unbelievably nice. Even in the details, like the super soft bed linens, it is palatial. It is also in a charming neighborhood, one block from the waterfront, with breathtaking views.
But even though it would be so easy to stay shut up in this beautiful home for every minute that we have it, I will, at the beckoning of my husband who has found us a church to go to this morning, venture back out into the city on this beautiful day. It is so lovely outside, as Anne says, I am sorry for those who have not yet been born today, because they will not be able to enjoy its beauty. And so I must go, for I have a skirt to put on before we are out the door.
June 17, 2008
For the last two days, the sun has been shining in Vancouver and we have drunk it in. We have walked and biked in it, basked in it at two different parks and enjoyed its warmth through the windows of our lovely house. I lied on the grass at a park yesterday for two hours and just listened to all the different accents while the kids played. Vancouver truly is an international city. Someone asked us where we were from because of our accent and Mary Polly was bewildered to discover that it is WE, who have accents and not THEM. Besides the park we haven’t ventured out to too many places. A bakery here, a small grocery there. But we have soooo enjoyed our house.
We’ve baked cookies, which was top on Mary Polly’s list of things to do while we have an oven. We have pulled out of our buried plastic tubs lots of the treasures I brought for the summer that are perfect for a rainy day, but that you can’t actually pull out in the rain. You can only fit so much inside a camper, so for the last weeks much of the entertainment I brought has remained in the van. We did a large jigsaw puzzle of Canada. Who knew there were so many provinces? I know I am revealing my total geographical ignorance here, but I have long been under the impression that there were like six or seven. A misconception we are correcting this week as we attempt to learn them all, and their capitals. Mary Polly is learning to cross stitch, with the same little pattern books from which I learned. I knew I saved those for a reason. She worked a good bit of the evening yesterday on a little koala bear. She keeps calling it “her patchwork,” because that is what Anne and Diana call their sewing. She loves to say, I must get back to my patchwork. She worked on it while I read Anne last night to her and three sleepy brothers. She is still sleeping late, but the boys are getting up much earlier without the cold and the rain to keep them snuggled into their bags. We have also pulled out the art supplies and lots more books. We are all spread and sprawled over this great house, and we are still in no danger of overcrowding it. Such luxury.
Still with all things pretty nearly perfect, we must have a few bumps in the road, ours currently being that Cole and I have spent the better part of the last week or so getting crossways with one another, culminating last night in my having to walk out of the room mid-sentence, leaving him alone on his bed for fear of boxing his ears or worse. When I came downstairs and told Taido that I was in danger of losing it with him, Mary Polly, seemingly enraptured with “her patchwork,” spouted from her corner, You knooooow, it’s kind of against the LAW to hit your kids, Mom!
Of course, I know that darling, that’s why I left the room. To avoid breaking the law.
Among other things. I went and spent a few minutes being quiet and breathing before going back upstairs to apologize to the little creton. We both decided to take a lesson from Anne and begin anew today. We had just read Anne’s words, Marilla, isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet? Marilla responds to Anne much like I’m afraid I would. She tells her that she’s certain she’ll fill it up with mistakes soon enough. But thank goodness that the Lord’s mercies are new every morning.
And they are. It is cloudy and colder today, which makes our presence in this house all the more a treasure. It’s wonderful to sit in a chair by the window that separates me from the elements. And we had these wonderful scones for breakfast with raspberry preserves, at Ben’s suggestion.
June 18, 2008
why i keep going back to the store for cheese
I am beginning a series of posts on things I love about Canada. I am doing this partly just to highlight the things I love and partly to take my focus off the things I don’t love, especially since most of the things I don’t love involve either the de-valuation of the US dollar or the lack of Arkansans, and those things really have nothing at all to do with Canada, except for its being the place where I happen to be experiencing them.
And so, the first thing I love about Canada is of course, the farms. The dairy farms (both cow and goat) have my particular love right now since the berries are still awaiting their moment as the stars of the summer. All the markets to which I have been carry local products, and the phrase BC made can be found all over, not just on produce but for all sorts of products. When Mary Polly and I met a lady with pink hair on the bus who was delivering papers, she made certain to tell us to go to Granville Island to eat and shop because there is NO corporate American crap over there, just pure handmade CANADIAN stuff!
When I was shopping yesterday evening at the local grocery, I saw products in the cheese case that were made by the farmers I visited last week. When I saw their label, I was like, oh I have to buy that cheese because those people are like my best friends now! Right then and there was when I recognized the brilliance of the Circle Farm Tours. If you go around and visit the farms, meet the artisans who make the cheese, milk, yogurt, etc, walk on their land and pet their animals, you begin to feel connected to the earth/farmer/animal that will make the food that you will later feel compelled, or even privileged to buy if you happen across it in your local market.
So I guess I don’t just love the farms of Canada. I love that farmers are so important to Canadians (or at least to British Columbians) that I already know about them even though I have only been in Canada for a few weeks. The interweaving and networking that has occurred to make Vancouver a locavore’s paradise must account for the fact that there are soooo many people here.
June 19, 2008
Ok, I’m pretty sure Canada didn’t like invent rhubarb. In fact it isn’t even indigenous to North America, strangely enough, but Canada is where I have been lovingly introduced to this enticing vegetable, so I’m counting it as one of the things I love about Canada. Taido and I had this strawberry-rhubarb pie experience on Granville Island a few weeks ago that I have since been trying to repeat. But without actually going to Granville Island, not that I don’t want to go back. I do. I do. But it is a headache of a bus ride with all the crazies and so I’ve been settling for substitutes that haven’t been quite as good, but that do have all the children singing the praises of this red stalky vegetable. Then I found a pie on Smitten Kitchen that I am just dying to try, but of course, I don’t have all my pie baking things with me, so I will have to wait until another day when I am back in my own precious kitchen (sigh) to try this pie. But I have been so wanting to get my hands on the vegetable, so I could get to know it a little better. You know? Feel its textures. Wash it. Chop it. Play with it so we can be friends. So I bought some. And last night I made a strawberry rhubarb crisp in one of the three (yes THREE!) cast iron skillets that I brought with me, and let me tell you. It was dEEElish! The kids were scraping that skillet for the crumbs and begging for more. I might just have to make one more before we say goodbye to the oven, because it is official. One of the things we Chinos just LOVE about Canada is rhubarb.
Here’s the recipe I used for the crisp if you want to try.
Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp
Place in the bottom of an 8 inch cast iron skillet
1 1/2 cups chopped strawberries
1 1/2 cups chopped rhubarb
1/4 cup turbinado sugar
2 teaspoons whole wheat flour
Mix the topping ingredients below and sprinkle on top of fruit:
1/2 cup melted butter
1/2 cup thick oats
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup turbinado sugar
1/2 cup chopped nuts
Bake at 400 degrees for 25-30 minutes.
Serve warm with vanilla ice cream. SOOOO good.
June 20, 2008
is everything i love about canada at the grocery store?
Ok, another thing I love about Canada is that all products are labeled both in English and in French. It is such a small detail, but it’s like language study all day long. It takes me twice as long at the grocery store because I am reading both labels just for the novelty. I am standing in the store saying the words to myself and just marveling at the fact that there are two languages on everything. Look that says, “beurre!” Hey, that means butter in French. (I am hard up for entertainment, apparently.)
The double labeling has gotten me in to trouble a few times though, like yesterday morning when Cole was fixing bagels for everyone (so I could keep sitting in my chair reading), all of a sudden he said, There is something wrong with this cream cheese! It doesn’t taste right. I barely glanced up from my book to say something like, Too bad. It’s Canadian cream cheese. It was all they had at the store. You’re just going to have to flex. Be grateful you have something to eat, etc. To which he threw down the knife, passed his bagel to Simon and marched out saying, I was REALLY looking forward to those bagels this morning. I responded with all kinds of grace again about just being grateful for having something to eat at all and about the 40000+ people who will DIE today because they don’t have enough to eat so I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANY MORE ABOUT IT!! DO YOU HEAR ME?? Not to mention that he was beginning to poison all the other children’s minds about the Canadian cream cheese that they had not even yet tasted. I never got up from my seat though. I just kept reading. Then, LATER, as I was cleaning up breakfast and putting away the cream cheese, I realized that the problem was not that the cream cheese was Canadian nor that it was organic. It was garden vegetable. Apparently, in reading the French label, I had just been so enchanted with the word “jardin” that I had neglected to notice that the cream cheese was not the usual plain variety that my kids are used to eating. Oh well. I do so love the way the word garden sounds in French. Tant pis about breakfast!
June 23, 2008
Hi all – this is Sarabeth posting on behalf of Alison…
Yesterday, while Alison and the kids and her mom were eating lunch, someone broke into the BMV and stole Alison’s laptop and some cameras. They have reported everything to the police, complete with serial numbers, so hopefully – just maybe – it will be recovered.
The fortunate part of the event is that although passports and cash were also in the van, none of that was taken. And, of course, that no one in that precious family was in danger.
Most of you know that Taido is in Colorado this week – so although Alison is okay, she is a bit shaken.
Also, sad to say, she will be without a computer for at least a week until he returns. So for all of us following the Chino camping adventure – well, we’ll just have to wait. She’ll be back – but she wanted you to know why she’s not here for now.
June 29, 2008
more things i love about canada*
Oh, I just have soooo much to tell you. First of all I never finished telling you everything I love about Canada. My things I love about Canada series was rudely interrupted by thieves. (Boo Hiss on stealing!) And I had so many more, but for the sake of time let just me sum them up for you.
Cool Street Names
Like who wouldn’t want to live on a street called Highbury.
The term First Nations
Instead of Native American or Indians. I love the way it sounds. Local First Nations art here. Like they were here first, eh? And they didn’t come from India. It just makes sense to me.
Provinces
Instead of states. Again, I just like the way it sounds. Like we’re in the south of France or just somewhere really really quaint.
Biking
No plastic bags
If I really do try to start riding my bike to the store when I get home, I will feel alone in the endeavor. When I take my canvas bags and baskets to the grocery store, I get funny looks. Sometimes a checker will actually put my groceries in plastic bags and then set them in the baskets, causing me to be all awkward and say, um, I don’t need that plastic bag. But here…if you don’t bring your own bags to the grocery store, you will be the one getting a funny look. Tons of people ride their bikes to the store, and to everywhere else as well. And almost everyone brings their own bags to the store. Even if you don’t personally get the evil of plastic, you don’t want to risk the grocer being all, Do you really need a bag? Like, Come on! What a total LOSER! They don’t actually call you a loser, but you can see it in their eyes. Who in this day and age doesn’t bring their own bags to the grocery store? I’ll tell you who. Southerners. For all the other rich benefits of living in the Southland, as in the really good pie, the friendly people and summer tomatoes warmed on the vines in the 100 degree sunshine, we have a ways to go as far as greenliness.
Bears
I know these aren’t exclusive to Canada or anything, but I’ve never seen so many. I know you’re not supposed to get up close and personal with them, but seriously, they are cool.
July 1, 2008
I woke up for the first time this summer in Oregon this morning. A new month in a new state. I love a fresh beginning and I am prone to look for one wherever it can be found, so it is with a smile and a little more spring in my step that I began this fresh morning, even though it brought with it the first rain clouds I have seen in almost two weeks.
My mother and I thoroughly enjoyed one another’s company for the week Taido was in Colorado, despite the downer of the dreadful break-in. The sun shone all week long. Taido got us all set up in a campground with both a swimming pool and a playground before he left for Colorado, so Mother and I sat outside talking and reading while watching the children play for much of the week. The days became so warm that I started to dig out shorts for Ben and me about halfway through the week, and that was when I realized that the two bags of clothes that I had been storing in the van (to reduce the camper clutter) had also been stolen. Everything but my jeans, my icebreakers (of which I know own three), my warm jacket, warm socks and wool caps was taken. Anything for warmer weather or for looking a tiny bit nicer was packed in the van safely away from the rain, but not from thieves. Half of it I was going to send home with Mother, and I was going to keep the other half to wear to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland or on an especially sunny day. I was sad all over again as I realized all that was gone. Many of you will rejoice in my sadness over a certain pair of pink striped casual North Face pants that I have worn non-stop for six years. And though you might be happy to never have to look at them again, I am quite distressed to have such a very piece of me gone. As well as my River Market patchwork skirt and dress. And my green wool Leadville Keens. And much much more. As I have compiled the list, I have been appalled really at how many clothes I owned and had with me. When you write it all out, it just looks scandalously extravagant. I have laughed and cried over praying and writing about being “purged.” I meant mostly to refer to being so isolated, but let’s just say that the stripping of material possessions by the thieves has certainly applied to my general sense of being purged. And they were very obliging of the fact that it was only I and not my blessed husband who requested the purging. None of Taido’s FOUR very nice backpacks were touched. Of course, he had two of them with him in Colorado, but there were still two buried in tubs in the van, along with all other forms of biking and climbing gear, too much to be listed, but all protected from the purge. Also protected, miraculously, was my purse which we found lying open on the floor on returning to the van, with visible cash and (gasp) six passports all still in tact. Certainly a little weensy angel pulled it out from someone’s arm as he was making his escape. Crazy.
Still, I was not made to suffer long at all. Within a few days, I received a package at our campground (did you know you could do that???) by two day mail from my sister which contained an old laptop of my brother-in-law’s (on which I am now typing) and lots of clothes with a note attached saying that “here are some clothes for Simon’s birthday in Alison’s size.”
Oh, I just LOVE Aunt Anna, Mary Polly squealed as I was trying on the clothes in the camper and then running back and forth to the bathroom to stand on the toilet seat with the stall door open in order to see full-length in the mirror. I now have something for warm weather and something to wear to the Shakespeare Festival.
And Mother and I determined that the robbery would not ruin our week. They would not get the best of us. So we lifted out from under the oppression of pouring over all the ways we could have prevented it and day tripped off here and there delighting in the glorious weather. We went to the zoo, to one of the most beautiful outdoor food markets in the world, and to a strawberry farm where we completely lost our minds and picked 32 pounds of strawberries. We had Mary Polly going all over the campground trying to give away berries. We made loads of friends. (Some campers next door to us shared some of their fresh caught salmon with us!) But even with so many given away, we still made ourselves ill on strawberries. We finally ate the last of them yesterday at our picnic lunch after climbing Beacon Rock, an 848 ft monolith (the 2nd largest in the world) that juts out into the Columbia River and affords absolutely gorgeous views of the Gorge.
I put Mother back on a plane on Saturday. I pulled her bags out of the back, set them on the curb and hugged her goodbye. When I hopped up into the driver’s seat, I turned around only to be met with the tears of my children, which of course made me cry. But we didn’t have too long to wait for our comfort. We were back at the airport on the next day picking up Taido. Praise God that he came back to us on that plane instead of drowning in a somewhat precarious river crossing in Colorado! We both had many tales to tell, which we did after we broke camp and hit the road to find our new home for a week. Riding shotgun on the open road is one of my favorite places to tell or listen to a story. We talked all the way down I-5 but our voices were hushed as we began to drive Highway 14 and let our eyes feast on the beauty driving east along the Columbia River. Scarcely had we finished the stories from the previous week before we began the new adventures of this one.
July 3, 2008
The first afternoon we spent in Hood River, Oregon, I was struck by how few children there were. Somehow, taking four children EVERYWHERE has made me very sensitive to how child-friendly places and people are. In another life, I would like to write a book on traveling with children because all the guidebooks I am using are for people without children, apparently. Hood River is similar to a ski town, only for windsurfers. And I think there are probably fewer children who windsurf than there are who ski. Perhaps someone can dispel my myth about windsurfing not really being a family sport, an idea largely put in place most likely by the fact that my aunt and uncle who don’t have children have been chasing the wind for as many years as I can remember. They live and work out of a Chinook that is parked in the part of the world with the with the most ideal combination of water and wind. This usually translates into Baja in the winter and the summer on the Gorge. Before I ever saw the Columbia River Gorge for myself, I heard it referred to by my uncle who was usually “headed to the Gorge” when the temperatures became unbearable in Arkansas. They are probably here right now and lest you think I am a shameful niece for having made plans to meet them, let me explain that this simply is not the way things are usually done in my dad’s family. (Of course, surely it goes without saying that these windsurfing gypsies are on my dad’s side of the family.) In fact, cell phones have sort of ruined the mystique for me about how Loibners (my maiden name) track one another down. Someone recently asked my mom how she ever did all those crazy trips with my dad before cell phones and she said that she never worried about finding him, because he always found her. When we were with him on a trip and he was taking off for his daily dose of adventure (ahem-like today…we got a text message from him on the top of Mt. Elbert this morning. All it said was “on Elbert.”), we never had to worry about where he would end up. Even without a very specific meeting place, he would find us. “I’ll meet you in Aspen,” he would say. And then there we’d be sitting in a park or a restaurant in Aspen and in he would walk, just as casual as you please. Or we would be walking through a little tourist downtown area of somewhere, say Crested Butte, and we would hear him whistle. We all knew that whistle. My brother, sister and I can still look at each other in a crowd and know we’ve heard Daddy’s whistle. For many years that is how we have known that he is nearby.
My dad comes by both his impeccable sense of direction and his tracking abilities honestly. And sometimes, these findings are a result of effort, but often they just seem to happen without explanation. Several years ago, my parents actually ran into my dad’s parents in Juneau, Alaska. Just walking down the street. My parents were on an anniversary cruise and my grandparents were backpacking up and down the coast of Alaska on the ferries, because you can ride the ferries for free if you are a senior citizen AND they have free coffee. Come on, what else do you need? After their meeting, I know my dad was forlorn to be returning to his stuffy cruise ship cabin while his parents were sleeping on a ferry deck under the stars, but he did marry my mother. And she’s certainly made her share of compromises. For a girl who was raised with a maid who came three times a week, she can certainly be a trooper. She spent seven nights in a pop up camper with me and my four children and she held her own just fine.
There are many more stories of family members on my dad’s side running into one another while on vacation. I think once my grandparents were picking berries on the side of the road in Oregon somewhere and my uncle saw them and stopped to say hello. I can’t remember the details of that one, but I swear it’s true. Also classic is the time Taido and I were sitting at our kitchen table in Seattle and he says, “That looks like your grandparents walking up our front steps!” And when I opened the door, my grandmother exclaimed, “We found you without even calling to get directions!“ Classic.
So it won’t surprise me if the next time I go into town for groceries or to do laundry, I run into my aunt and uncle. They‘ll have no trouble spotting me. I’m the only girl in town NOT wearing board shorts and a bikini top, and if that’s not enough…well there is a parade of four children behind me. Give a hollar if you see us!
July 5, 2008
I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures following one another softly like pearls slipping off a string.
I just read this line to the children from Anne of Avonlea a while ago while as we sat on blankets in our campsite. The words describe today just perfectly. The sun is shining, but a gentle breeze has blown all day. We stayed in camp today, even Taido stayed here and studied most of the day in the camper. We have been converting Mary Polly’s bed to a table for her to draw and Taido to study, which meant I could leave Simon there for a nap after lunch. Cole also stayed back and enjoyed some much needed quiet while Ben and I followed Mary Polly on her bike through the campground. We took a path that runs over the railroad tracks and carves through a little forest down to the shore of the river where the windsurfers put in. The shore is littered with small clam shells which both Ben and Mary Polly love to collect. We are already traveling with a jar almost full of small shells and pieces of beach glass from previous days of collecting, but you can’t have too many I suppose. I sat on a piece of driftwood and closed my eyes, enjoying the rougher winds blowing on my face while I cupped my hands to hold the shells they brought to me. When my hands were full, we walked down to another part of the shore and watched a kite boarder put into the river. I shivered a little as he waded out into the cold river with a rope and waited for his buddy to release the kite tied to the end of it, which is much easier said than done. The kite was huge and seemed awkward to hold up, especially as it filled with the wind and became heavy enough to knock even a strong man down. After several tries, the kite finally flew up into the air and was quickly guided out over the river. His friend then slid the man in the water his kiteboard, which I was amazed only took one try. I’ve slid loads of water skis to people (mostly my father) in much less choppy water and I nearly always miss, making the poor skier swim with the rope wrapped around his arm to get his water ski. But one smooth shove of the board and seconds later the kite boarder was pulled up on top of the water and out into the river, moving quickly over the waves so that in just a bit, the kite that was so huge before was now just a tiny blue crescent amidst the massive backdrop of rock and mountain that rises on the opposite side of the Gorge.
Mary Polly soon took off on her bike and though I could have sat and watched the surfers all afternoon, Ben and I gathered up our shells and began to slowly make our way back along the path. We took in the yellow and orange poppies on the sides of the path. Such bright pretty little things. We checked the progress of many a blackberry bush. Last week on our walks, all the bushes were covered in white flowers, but now only a few flowers remain, tiny green berries forming in their places. I’ve promised that by Mary Polly’s birthday they’ll be just covered in blackberries. On about our thirtieth bush we discovered a few early ripened berries in an especially sunny corner, but they were very sour. As we were standing around with puckered lips, Ben said, Hey Mama! Look up there at all those red balls. I think those are cherries! And indeed, Ben had found a wild cherry tree. We could only reach five or six cherries to taste them and they were oh so sweet! It was just torture to have so many dangling above our heads out of reach. After standing and staring and jumping and grabbing for a while, we determined that we would have to climb the tree. Mary Polly had come back to find us at this point, and she was strongly urging me to figure out how to get up higher because it was just so exciting to have found a wild cherry tree! Oh how I wished for my sister at that moment! (And I wished correctly for my sister and not my husband because let me tell you that when I later tried to enlist Taido’s help in going back for a second round, he was not exactly enthusiastic about the project.) Anna would have scrambled up into the tree before I had finished tasting my first cherry, but in her absence and at Ben and Mary Polly’s begging, I gingerly stepped into the blackberry bushes surrounding the trunk of the tree and climbed as I high as I could into it. It was about this time that we realized that we had nothing to put the cherries in, so Mary Polly rode back to camp to retrieve her handy red bucket. She informed me when she came back that Cole was rereading Anne of Green Gables and he had just read the part where Anne says she thinks it would be lovely to sleep in a wild cherry tree when Mary Polly informed him that we had found one. Well, being in a wild cherry tree myself, I wasn’t so sure about the sleeping part but that did not lessen my enjoyment of the happy coincidence of finding myself in a scrape worthy of Anne Shirley herself.
Ben and Mary Polly ended up having to tromp all through the blackberry briars in order to reach the cherries on the branches I pulled down or to take them from my hands by the fist full. At one point I had one leg wrapped around a thick branch while I slowly leaned back on another one until I was bent almost completely in a backbend along the branch, hanging practically upside down picking cherries with my left hand from a branch I was holding down with my right. The things I will do for fresh fruit! You have no idea! We worked for probably close to an hour and brought back the bucket about half full. Slow going. But we might have picked a full bucket if you count the ones in our bellies and the ones that slipped through our fingers into the blackberry bushes.
Cole and Taido happily helped us eat our cherries, but I’m not sure they fully appreciated the great effort that getting them required. But that’s alright because even though we are all three covered in scratches, it was worth the simple delight of the novel experience for all of us. Ben said as we were walking back that today was his first time picking wild cherries to which I replied, You know what, me too!
July 7, 2008
at the Bend Public Library in Bend, Oregon
We’ve moved again. I am always a little wistful to leave a beautiful landscape even if we are exchanging it for another one just as lovely. Plus moving days are just a wee bit stressful. The packing up, the wondering where we’ll end up next. Even if we have a plan, there are always at least a few bumps (or boulders) in the road. However, mercifully sandwiched in between the twin headaches of packing up and setting up is usually a drive. This is the part I love. It is very restful for me, since I am not actually doing the driving and the kids (if by some miracle they have not had their brain drain privileges revoked) are usually buried in various forms of media, so it is quiet. Taido and I talk or just ride in silence.
Yesterday’s drive was exceptionally gorgeous, beginning in the Hood River Valley which is covered up in wineries, orchards and fresh fruit stands. We stopped at one of each before Taido had his fill of my saying, Oh can we please stop there? We tasted local wines, gobbled up cherries and the first of the season’s blueberries and we bought some fresh local sweet treats, in particular a little delectably flaky pie of which we all had a bite. There is actually a brochure called the Fruit Loop that details this area’s local produce treasures. You could spend a long time just following the loop and stopping at all the little troves. Our favorite was the Gorge White House which combined a wine tasting and a fruit stand inside of an old white farmhouse romantically situated between views of the rolling hills quilted with orchards and Mt Hood rising on its other side. Mary Polly and I had to spend a little time imagining what it would be like to live in such a spot.
After all the stopping we drove on through the hills surrounding Mt Hood, taking in the shots of the mountain like giant paintings around each bend in the road. It rises much like Mt Rainier does in Washington, seemingly out of nowhere, flanked on all sides by evergreen forests. And the Hood River bubbled along the highway, descending as we were ascending. Goodbye, sweet little Hood River, both the town with the yummiest pizza place ever and the river with all its rapids and kayaks. I hope to see you again one day!
Soon the bright green forests and orchards gave way to cattle ranches and tumbleweeds. The moisture seemed as though it were sucked completely from the air, leaving only dust and dryness. In fact, our new campsite is so dusty that the children are not allowed in the camper until they have bathed. Bathing. Yes, it is practically a foreign concept, especially to those boys, but they now have to at least rinse off. Simon bathes in one of our kitchen tubs and I am sorry that you cannot see it because now that he has stopped screaming and actually likes his little kitchen tub bath, it is the cutest thing ever!
Though I find I am not partial to layers of dust, in exchange for its annoyance, there are several new wonders to behold at our new home. The most pervasive is that it smells like Christmas. The smell of the pines is so strong that it sort of soothes if you release yourself to it. By that I mean to say that I am trying to take deep breathes of pine instead of choking on the dust that is following Ben around like Pigpen. He seriously looks exactly like Pigpen. Ben has made sort of an art out of being messy and his gift for dirty has been mastered here in the desert climate of central Oregon. But it’s all good, because the second wonder of our new campground is solar showers. Have you ever seen the likes of it at a campground? How fascinating is that! We were deep inside our sleeping bags last night as the temperature dropped about 50 degrees, and at 6 when Taido got up to leave this morning I could hardly stand to poke my head out, but by 8 the sun was quickly warming everything in its path, including the water for our showers. That just amazes me I tell you.
It’s the details I love. I know that Bend is like this amazing town with crazy amounts of cool places to discover. I have a stack of just a few of the recommended destinations from the visitors’ center detailing waterfalls, volcanic formations, caves and I know not what that I will later choose from as I plan how we will spend our days here. But I can tell you now the thing I will remember about our stay will be the solar showers, oooh and maybe the nice deep outdoor kitchen sinks for washing dishes. All campgrounds should have those.
July 9, 2008
you can’t find a cherry tree every day
If you had been in Tumalo State Park one morning this week, you just might have overheard the following conversation.
Cole: I don’t know why we have to wander around looking for the keys. I didn’t lose them. Why did Mom give her keys to Simon anyway?
Mary Polly: I don’t know. Ben! Where did you and Simon go this morning with the keys!?!
Ben: (doing his imitation of a deaf mute)
Cole: Well, I think it was very irresponsible of Mom to let Simon play with her keys. She should be the one looking for them. It’s her fault they are lost.
Mary Polly: Simon what did you do with Mom’s keys!!
Simon: keys!
Mary Polly: Yes, Simon, KEYS, where are Mama’s keys?
Cole: Now we can’t go to Barnes and Noble and it’s all Mom’ fault!
Mary Polly: MOOOOOOOOOM! Cole is saying that you are irresponsible for giving Simon your keys and he’s not helping us look for them!!!!
Me: Sadly he is right, but it is quite rude of him to point it out.
More wandering around the campground looking.
More comments about whose fault it is that Simon took the keys out of our campsite this morning.
Ben: Should we call dad?
Me: Of course we should NOT call dad and tell him that I gave the keys to Simon and now they are lost.
I’m sure I only meant to give Simon the keys for a second when he asked for them early this morning. “KEYS KEYS KEYS!” But then something distracted me and he wandered off with Ben. Maybe it was the spilled laundry soap. Or the kettle boiling for coffee. Or those pesky chipmunks who have to be chased away from our breakfast. Who knows? Of course I KNOW I shouldn’t have given Simon the keys. But I think I am just getting my just desserts for something I might have said to my friend Natalie when I opened her silverware drawer one day and all her spoons were gone because she let her little one dig in the backyard with them. Of course, she didn’t HAND her daughter the spoons, but distractions prevailed and the spoons disappeared one by one, kind of like my keys.
Happily, I remembered finally that Mother brought an extra set of van keys, so we finally loaded up and left. We spent the morning in Barnes and Noble, ate our picnic lunch in a park and then spent the afternoon at the Bend Public Library. We love that place.
When we returned to camp hours later, Ben miraculously retrieved my keys from the camp lost and found. Friends, if you are doubting whether or not someOne is looking out for us on this trip, well, let me put your doubts to rest.
July 13, 2008
sorry for belated and LENGTHY posting…both electricity and wireless have been scarce lately…
Friday afternoon, July 11, 2008
Crater Lake National Park
Oregon
Oregon is beginning to grow on me, to say the least. If you’re wondering why we are still in Oregon, well, there are a couple of factors. A week from today I will be attending the 40th birthday weekend of a friend from my Seattle days, and her party is in Ashland, Oregon at the Shakespeare Festival. Oh, yes it is. And I will be staying in a house and going to plays while my family hangs out in some RV Park somewhere, preferably one with a swimming pool if Taido knows what’s good for him. I‘m not sure what I will do when that weekend is over because looking forward to it has got me through a lot of rough moments.
We are taking our time getting to and from Ashland because Taido’s advisor is out of town this month. So we are traveling with two LARGE tubs of books, more than it could possibly be legal to check out from the Regent College Library, but you know, I’m sure Taido worked that little issue out somehow. And Taido is continuing to study during the day, mostly at random little public libraries. The Bend Public Library was so nice that after we met him there on the first day, the kids were begging to go back. This worked out to be entirely to my advantage, because of the four days Taido spent studying there, two of those he had a child in tow. Because it was a seven mile bike ride, only the hearty bicyclers got to go, so no Simon. Cole rode in one morning while we went and did laundry. Then we picked up Cole and his bike and went on two different desert hikes. Apparently, we are in the middle of loads of volcanoes here in Oregon, so we went to a National Volcanic Monument just a little south of Bend and hiked through a molten lava field that is over 6000 years old. Crazy. The rocks are all black, like ash only hard. It looks like it could just crumble away only it has been there like forever. Mary Polly was wearing a new white sundress that I bought for her since all her summer clothes were stolen and I was so sorry I didn’t have a camera to take a picture of her running ahead through this jet black field in her little white dress. Of course, I know that considering previous posting about how incredibly dusty and dirty it is here that it was a little foolish to buy her a white sundress, but it was on sale. And Whitney and I had looked at so many earlier in the season when they were not on sale. And is there anything sweeter than a flowing white sundress on your little girl whom you won‘t be able to call little for much longer. I’ll just have to bleach it after our day of hiking, except that I don’t really use bleach anymore since all my toxin reading, but whatever. I’ll worry about that later. What I’m really trying to say is that we walked over a big black lava field in the hot hot sun and it was crazy. Then we hiked along the Deschutes River to see some falls that a ranger recommended to us since we were too late to hike through a lava cave that we were all aching to get into because it is 42 degrees in the cave. It was definitely not 42 degrees in the lava field. More like 115. Or something. And it wasn’t much cooler than that along the river, plus we were attacked by mosquitoes of unusual size. Yikes. After we ran back through the heat and the mosquitoes to the van, I asked Mary Polly what she wanted for dinner. She said, Well, I know you don’t want to hear this and I know you hate this place, but I was really hoping that maybe we could go to…McDonald’s. For a special treat because we hiked so much without complaining too much. She said it all in one big breathe and then she kind of scrunched up her nose at me like she was waiting for my reaction to hearing the word. McNasty is what Taido calls it, but he was planning on studying until the library closed at 8 so I said, Ok, I guess we can go there. I mean we haven’t been there once all summer long and hopefully it will be FREEZING COLD in there.
Really? Really, we can go there? Oh my goodness, I’m going to go tell the boys! Thank you SOOO much Mama! Thank you! Thank you! All this cost me just $11.40. And having to smell McDonald’s, but everyone was so happy to get to go, and they played on the gross tube structure while I tried to not think about how many disgusting micro-organisms must be living in them. It’s funny, but I am not nearly as grossed out by the nasty desert spiders and critters as I am by those fast food play places. Festering germ pools they are.
As we drove home, Mary Polly and Ben marveled when Cole pointed out the large hill he had come up on his bike that morning. When Ben said, Wow Cole! You are like a professional! something must have started brewing in Mary Polly because nothing would tempt her from having her turn to ride to town with Daddy the next day. I knew that she would slow Taido down considerably and that she was dreading going into the dark scary cave with us, so I offered to just drop her at the library on our way to the Lava Cave. But, oh no, she had something to prove. And so she had her turn on the massive hill, and her day at the library, where she attended a program they were having for young readers, ate at a very nice restaurant (her words) with her Daddy and sat on giant animal shaped bean bags reading for most of the day. She was not sorry to miss the cave, which was as she predicted, dark and scary. The Lava Cave is a mile long tube formed by the same lava flows that were responsible for the fields we hiked the day before. It really is amazing.. It was different from most caves I’ve been in because of it’s height and width. A lot of the terrain was even kind of smooth with sections of it that felt like long hallways. Dark hallways. We each had our own headlamp, which means we could each see the step in front of us. Which is good. We were in that cave a long time and I thought a lot about darkness and light while we were in there. How just a little bit of light in so much darkness is a welcome friend. Whenever a group with a lantern passed by us going the opposite direction, we enjoyed seeing their bigger lights illuminating places we couldn’t see before. I really was being oh so careful because I was carrying Simon in the backpack, but I still managed to step into a hole and fall, scraping us both and twisting my ankle. At this point we were about three-fourths of the way in, so we only went a little further before turning around and hiking out. Ben had stepped into a puddle and was whining about being cold. Obviously he had forgotten how terribly hot we’d been the day before. It was a long way back to the opening, but we could see the light from the opening well before we reached it. I really like that about a cave. The light at the end of the tunnel. Then you come out and it’s so bright that the light is hurting your eyes and you have to squint to see. Light is really super great. I can totally understand why Jesus uses the phrase light of the world both about himself and in regards to our role in this world as his followers. I definitely want to be light. Not dark. We were hiking today and my ankle still hurts from yesterday, but I was thinking how different it was to be able to see exactly where I was putting my feet with every step. I could protect my ankle with where I chose to step.
After the cave we ate our picnic lunch and then went to something called the High Desert Museum. Cole had begged to go there because he had seen a brochure and MOM, they have animals! And it was cool, but I was dog tired from the whole cave bit. I had almost started crying just thinking about dropping Simon in that backpack and what if his little head had banged itself on a rock and what was I thinking carrying that child on my back into a cave!! Simon in the backpack is really a subject all unto itself. I have gone back and forth between doing or not doing things over being willing or unwilling to carry him in that thing. At the beginning of the summer, I thought, It will be okay. I’ll just get really strong carrying it and then I’ll be used to it and it won’t be such a big deal. Actually, I thought this about a lot of things. But somehow, I am not really strong, even though I have carried it A LOT. And there are some mountains I just won’t climb because I know I can’t do it with that thing on, and that frustrates me. So sometimes, I just think, well, I can’t let having Simon keep me from doing this or that so I am just going to buck up and carry that thing. Come on, you can do it, get over yourself, etc. And then there is Taido and the backpack. When it is his turn to wear the backpack, which is anytime he happens to be with us, he is totally uninhibited by it. He can walk/hike just as fast. He has even skied with it on. And let’s not even get into how much easier it is for him to use the restroom when carrying the backpack! And it never seems as though Simon is in any danger of falling when Taido is wearing it, which let’s face it, he is pretty much in danger every time I even put it on or take it off, a perilous process in and of itself. And bless his little pookey heart, he’s not even putting his life in danger at his own doing, as is often the case. When Taido came back from backpacking in Colorado, he put on Simon in the backpack and he said, Man, Simon, you’re light! Because apparently he carried quite the heavy load in Colorado. Well, that just ticked me off. I had been carrying that thing the whole week he was gone and now he was going to call it light! All of this probably somehow contributed to my finding myself in a situation in which I should probably not have been carrying my baby. These are thoughts I am having as we tour the High Desert Museum, in which I am also carrying Simon in the backpack, only this time in the daylight, but a little slower considering the ankle and all. There were exhibits on the Native Americans in the desert lands (whose lives we white men have totally ruined, PS), the explorers, farmers, homesteaders, cattle ranchers and miners. It really was a neat museum, and it does have a few animals. Lots of bird of prey, of which I have decided I am not a fan. Every time I see a bird of prey in captivity, it is eating a dead animal, usually a rodent. The boys think it’s super cool, but it grosses me out. Plus the birds of prey are outside, as was the authentic homesteader ranch of 1880 and did I mention that we are in the desert. And it is hot in the desert.
Not to worry though, we have moved back to higher elevations and are now at about 7000 ft, enjoying much cooler weather after our week in Bend. And we saw Crater Lake today, which is the deepest lake in the United States, you know why? Because it is in the middle of volcano that exploded over 7000 years ago. Then it collapsed in on itself and filled up with rain and snow. No rivers pour into it so it is the cleanest large body of water in the world, and it is the bluest blue I have ever seen. As we walked along the edge today, I just kept saying Look how BLUE it is. From now on when I say I am blue, this is the blue to which I will be referring. Crater Lake Blue. Deep deep blue. In fact, after I sat down on the edge of the rim and stared down at the blue for a long time (resting my ankle while the others went to the gift shop), I sort of became a little melancholy just staring into it. So so blue. So so deep. The walls that rise around the lake that form the crater are so high that the depth you must go even to reach the lake seems overwhelming. We’ll see, I think we’re going to hike the path down to it tomorrow. My brochure says that coming back up from the lake is the equivalent of climbing 150 flights of stairs. Obviously, if we do it, I won’t be wearing Simon in the backpack.
July 15, 2008
oh, and i’ve been meaning to tell you…
Monday, July 14, 2008
Yesterday was another long day of driving around staking out homesteads for the week, but let me tell you that I think we have definitely happened upon something wonderful in the discovery of our current surroundings. We are aided in the tedious process of choosing a campground by a book we have called Pacific Northwest Campgrounds, in which we have the most basic of descriptions of places we set out to visit. I don’t mean to imply that the book is not helpful, because it truly is, but it is limited in its helpfulness by the fact that it was certainly not written by a mother of four children. The campground amenities are listed, but not detailed. If there are showers of any kind, there is a shower symbol. And for a playground, another symbol. But the playground can just as easily be a large and wonderful play structure as it can be a set of two swings over a pile of dust. Therefore, it is difficult to choose a campground for its play area without actually seeing it. So, several of the campgrounds we have looked at seem to be quite the same according to the book, but you can’t really tell until you see it. Drive through it. Get out and check the bathrooms. Sit outside for a minute to see if you are eaten up with mosquitoes or attacked by chipmunks. Or sit outside for an hour to know how many trains will pass by in that time and just how loudly they will be honking their horns. I haven’t mentioned all the dreadful surprises we have discovered after we have already set up camp in places, because I do so hate to be negative and as soon as we come to a place, I try to figure out what we can remember and love about it instead of focusing on its annoying points, or I try to find the treasures of the area without worrying about what kind of campground we are in. Besides, it is all part of the journey and the most annoying bits will always stand out to us and make us laugh years from now. That being said, without trying to be negative at all, but for the benefit of some poor soul who is driving through the Oregon and camping with lots of children (could there really be anyone else??), I will attempt to tell you a couple of the things I have neglected to mention without scaring you off from a camping adventure of your own, but rather to enhance your journey. Maybe it will save someone a trip all the way down to the Valley of the Rogue State Park, which will be a complete waste of your time, because what the books don’t tell you is that it is connected to a rest area (hello vagabonds!) and there are scary signs on the check in booth that say things like Please stay in your car at all times and We have no money on the premises. The bathrooms are filthy and the showers are locked at night to keep out someone. I don’t know who, because I certainly didn’t stay long enough to meet them. And if that’s not enough, it is RIGHT next to the freeway…Hello, LOUD TRAFFIC NOISE all night long! Bye Bye, Valley of the Rogue. On to brighter spots.
When camping (or even staying) on the Columbia River Gorge, you might as well know that a train runs down both sides of the Gorge regularly, up to four times an hour. So the train noise is hard to avoid. But if you stay at Viento State Park, which you might because they do have wild cherry trees, well there is an actual railroad crossing nearby so you get to hear the train horns all day and ALL NIGHT LONG. And don’t go to Viento for the playground. Four swings over a sand pit. That’s it. However, you cannot beat the very clean showers and bathrooms or paying only $16 a night for electricity. We were mighty grateful for our electricity because we ran the fans to attempt to drown out the train. The first few days Simon’s eyes got as big as saucers whenever the train horn honked and he ran for the nearest lap he could find, scared out of his wits. But by the end of the week, he just yelled CHOO CHOO whenever he heard the horns. He still founds someone’s lap, but he wasn’t nearly as freaked out by it.
At Tumalo State Park, the solar showers are glorious, but you can’t regulate the temperature so it was too hot for the boys and not quite hot enough for me. Still the desert heat made even a not hot enough shower a treat. The advantage to this campground besides its wonderful pine smell is its proximity to Bend which is a great place to hang out. The playground is again just a couple of swings over the dust pit. Also the book says that the park has swimming, and this is true sort of. The swimming area is no where near the campground. It is a swimming hole on the Deschutes River on the opposite side of the main road from the campground. Our family will probably not be returning to Tumalo in our lifetime because while we were there, we had some creepy experiences with critters there, ones that it is still too soon to discuss. Ditto the creepy critters in Golden Ears Provincial Park in B.C.
Crater Lake National Park is so beautiful. You have to go there, but you do not have to camp there. Even where we are currently camping is within shooting distance of Crater Lake, The main reason you don’t want to camp there is not even the dirty bathrooms and showers which cost several quarters, but who cares because they were locked up the entire time we were there. No friends the main reason for steering clear of the Mazama Village campground would be the GINORMOUS mosquitoes that swarm constantly. There was no relief from them except in the camper. If you held the door open too long, you risked everyone’s wrath over letting in several mosquitoes. Simon got bit on his eye and it swelled completely shut, so for three days he looked like we’d entered him in a toddler boxing competition. Yesterday, Cole blogged briefly about the mosquitoes in the Safeway parking lot while Mary Polly and I were grocery shopping and when I asked him why he didn’t mention Simon’s eye, he said that it was just too painful to talk about.
But now here we are at Stewart State Park somewhere between Crater Lake and Ashland, and it is just about perfect. The campsites surround a huge grassy field, in the middle of which is a great playground, with lots to play on, including swings. There is even a tetherball. Oh, the tetherball Cole and Ben have played today! And next to the playground is a large pile of big rocks from which water shoots from noon until 8pm and flows down through a little man made brook and pond. The kids have played all day in that water. The state park is located on the Rogue River, which also has a swimming area, but we haven’t even been there yet because of the rock fountain. Plus in order to have this grassy field in the desert, there are sprinklers going all the time that the kids have been running and biking through. The whole area is flat, so it is great for riding bikes. The bathrooms are clean and the showers are tiled, not cement floors, but tiled. And they are not coin showers, which means you can shower for as long as you want, plus they are not push button so you can control your own temperature. It’s all in the details, I tell you. There are dishwashing sinks. And you already know I love those. There is a junior ranger program every single morning, not just on the weekends as at many places. Since this is definitely a family friendly place to land, it is certainly not undiscovered. There are loads of other families here, which means lots of friends with which to play. It is stinking hot in the afternoons, because we have dropped in elevation and are back in the desert heat, which is a good time to mention our newest love for the pop up camper. It has an air-conditioner. Friends, we are living in the lap of luxury here. An air-conditioner! Are you kidding me? We laughed over the fact that we had A/C when we were freezing our little bums off in the Grand Tetons, but we are loving that baby now! When the heat became unbearable around 3pm today, we all holed up in the camper and watched Anne of Green Gables on my laptop. Does life get any better than that?
July 17, 2008
Our big boy is 11 today. It will be a low key birthday year, which he doesn’t mind so much. He has asked for a trip to Barnes and Noble and some Chinese food. Pretty reasonable really. But he has mentioned several times though that he wishes he could be with his friends for his birthday. Mary Polly said that maybe we could have party when we get home and have all our friends to celebrate our birthdays. (Mary Polly’s is in August.) Both Cole and Ben have really missed their friends. I have actually been surprised by how much they have missed them. I just figured that since they have each other, they should be content and really, it’s Mary Polly who should be missing friends. But Mary Polly is used to being the only girl, plus she and I have thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company this summer. She grocery shops with me and reads with me. (We lost the boys after book 2 of Anne of Green Gables. Ben especially doesn’t find Anne nearly as interesting now that she is grown up and doesn’t get into trouble all the time.) She likes the same movies I like and she enjoys a good used bookstore. She is working on her junior ranger badge so we have been riding bikes around to try and find all the answers to the questions in her little booklet. Yesterday we found the walnut tree grove that Joseph H. Stewart planted over one hundred years ago in this campground. That was before it was a campground of course. He also planted pear trees, and was apparently a pioneer in growing fruit in this region. I don’t know much else about him, but he was clearly a man after my own heart. So apart from the usual dramatic breakdowns about the boys being mean to her and it is soooo hard to always be the only girl that happen no matter where we are, she has been pretty happy all summer. When friends come along, it is an added surprise, a sweet diversion. Yesterday a family pulled up across the way from us and on the back of their rig were four PINK bicycles. Very exciting. And I’m sure that Mary Polly will be meeting them and telling them all about how to be a junior ranger.
But the boys. They have MISSED their friends. Let me tell you just how much. Frequently they are still playing with their friends, only in their imaginations. They have invented this elaborate game (something with Pokemon) and each of their friends has some sort of role in it and they play it over and over again…as if their friends are really here. They have spent hours drawing these extravagant clubhouses in which they and their friends are all playing video games on large widescreen televisions and drinking root beer from their own personal coke machines. And since it’s all imaginary anyway, they have added in a few friends that aren’t even real, like Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes. He has a very important role in the game. They even add in friends they have met this summer at various campgrounds. In fact, in their imaginary world they have assembled a group of boys that would not ever actually be together in real life. The best imaginable playdate. It is crazy funny, even if at times it is a little sad. I suppose it is just their way of keeping their friends close to their hearts, which is sweet, right? Still, we are going to have to have a full on par-TAY when we get home. One with actual people.
July 18, 2008
In addition to many different tubs full o junk (very necessary junk), we are also traveling with 5 bicycles. FIVE. Two of them are Taido’s. He sort of has a thing for biking, and I’m sure there is a very good reason that we are traveling with a mountain bike AND a road bike for him. I’m just not exactly sure what it is. Then Cole, Mary Polly and Ben each have a bike. If it were not for the total pain of lugging it around, we would have bought Simon a little trike by now because he is constantly trying to climb on all the bigger bikes. He really would like to get in on the biking. But there is one child who has not really cared for the biking portion of our summer adventure, and that would be Ben. Ben’s whole season of learning to ride a bike has made me eat a lot of the things I have thought in the past about kids learning to ride bikes. Cole and I both were riding our bikes (sans training wheels) at the age of five, and so I just wasn’t sure what was taking everyone else so long. That’s why God gave me so many children. Even if three out of four children manage to meet every unreasonable expectation I have about parenting, there will always be one who breaks the mold. And it isn’t always the same child. They take turns having a go at humbling me and making me vow to never say, I won’t ever… or No child of mine will… or All my children will know how to ride a bike. It’s amazing how much I have to keep re-learning that lesson. You would think I would know by now. Anyway, because of my preconceived notions about children and bikes, we have been lugging Ben’s bike around all summer even though he hasn’t been riding it. It just sits there. About once a week, Taido makes him do a few loops around the campground with him. And then once a week turned into twice a week. And then last week sometime, they started practicing every night. Somehow, Ben all of a sudden became way less resistant to the idea whereas at the beginning of the summer he all but refused to go and often had to be bribed. He said things like, I hate bikes. I never want to ride a bike. Earlier this year, Ben really had the whole bike thing down, but he crashed on our street (which is not a good bike riding street for a beginner because it is basically one large hill) and he said he was done forever. And he meant it. Since then, nothing could tempt him to get out on a bike. He said he was happy on a scooter, and he has been mad at me this summer for bringing his bike instead of his scooter.
All summer long, Mary Polly and Cole have ridden bikes everywhere and Ben is always running behind them. It has made me sad. He looks all pitiful running behind their bikes, and of course, he is always the last one to arrive at the park or the lake or wherever they are going. But it has not seemed to bother him at all. He is happy to go at his own pace. Ben is a little clumsy…it kind of fits in with his messiness. At the end of every day, he has new scrapes and bruises, and is covered in dirt. It seems like he is always the one to get hurt. He got stung by a bee earlier this week. No one else has been stung all summer. He is our only child who has broken a bone. He has received more stitches on his head than anyone else. He is just accident prone. Since it seems life is already sort of dangerous for Ben on the ground, it can’t get any better to add height and wheels to the situation. I guess.
But yesterday, for some unknown reason, Ben turned the corner. He actually asked for Taido to take him out on his bike for a loop around the campground. Maybe it is the thrill of riding through all the sprinklers that are going around every corner, or just that (as I already mentioned) this campground is perfect for bike riding. Maybe it’s that Anne and Gilbert ride bikes in the movie version of Anne of Green Gables, and he’s seen Gilbert crash on his bike and live to tell about it. I don’t know what it was, but somehow he miraculously crossed that threshold and by mid-morning he was riding all around on his own. He did have several accidents, but none were bad enough to throw him off riding for good. At least so far, he seems thrilled to be out on his bike. Simon cheers for him every time he rides back up into our campsite. so great! At one point I looked way across the campground and on the other side of the park all three big kids were riding their bikes in a row and I tell you my heart just leapt up out of its spot. I just love that sight. It was so sweet to me. Idyllic and summery and pastoral.
And when it got really hot. 2-5pm is the window of time that you must remain perfectly still to avoid melting. Because the camper was feeling a tad crowded to me after three hours our first day here, the second day we headed to a small town to do our laundry during the heat of the day. BAD PLAN. It was even hotter in the Laundromat than it was outside. I couldn’t even bear to stay long enough to dry my clothes. I brought them all back and hung them up and they were dry in like 20 minutes. Which also saved me $5, by the way. So yesterday, when Simon went down for a nap and Cole and Mary Polly retreated to the camper to read, Ben and I found some shade under some trees, where we put blankets on the ground and half read and half slept for a while. After about an hour, he said, Well, I think I am going to go and ride my bike and see if that will make me cool. I watched him through sleepy eyes, the sole movement in the entire campground, besides the slow fluttering of the tree leaves being blown by a hot breeze. He rode the circle of the campground for a long time all by himself. A long time coming, but he seems to finally have it. On his own time. In his own way.
Mary Polly was seven before she could ride her bike alone, but Ben surprised me by not wanting to catch up with the others earlier. He turned seven in April. I think my mom was like ten before she learned to ride a bike. She lived on a busy street and her parents were very cautious. It is funny how all different circumstances can play into when and where you learn how to ride a bike. Anna and I learned to ride our bikes when our family lived on a cul-de-sac, which is not only a perfect place to learn, but we had the added influence of lots of other kids on bikes. Peer pressure. I have seen several kids learn to ride on camping trips. We go camping every fall with several families and every year it seems like someone learns to ride their bike as all the other kids go pedaling by. And then there are those kids who have no fear and seem to have been born knowing how to ride a bike. When we lived in an apartment complex in Seattle, which was a terrible place for bike riding (the complex, not Seattle, which is a very bike-friendly town), Cole’s best little buddy was always taking Cole’s bike and riding it through the steep parking lot as fast as he could. He broke the training wheels off of it bumping over curbs, and he was barely four years old. In fact, I think Cole only learned so early because he had watched Ja’vohn for so long. However, Mary Polly was not the least bit responsive to the knowledge that Kindell (her best friend) and Grace (her cousin) already knew how to ride bikes, so didn’t she want to learn too so she could ride with them?? That tactic never works with her. She’ll let you know when she’s ready and don’t bother her before then thank you very much.
I am excited about biking as a means of transportation and fun for our family. Especially with gas being so expensive. On a bike shop in Bend, Oregon we saw a billboard that said…Three tanks full of gas or a new bike? Which one will last you longer? Clever, eh?
How about you? When and where did you learn to ride a bike? Or why didn’t you? Do you still ride it? Does it take you back to being 10 years old in a neighborhood full of kids? Do you want to start riding bikes with me to the grocery store? We could get some of those cool satchel things. I think they could be considered gear. Taido would be all over it.
July 22, 2008
Beachside State Park
Oregon Coast
We have arrived at the beach. But we are having just a weensy bit different experience from the traditional Arkansan’s week at the beach. It is not just that we are camping. Taido said to me yesterday out of the blue, We are full on camping for three months. You know at first I thought that we were sort of cheating when we got the pop up camper, but now I don’t really think so. Full. On. Camping. I was experiencing some rough moments of re-entry from what may have been the best three days of my entire summer, about which I am writing, but it is going to take some time to do it justice. But needless to say, I am getting back into the swing of life in the pop up, which includes searching every tub in the van for the peanut butter because in three days, my family managed to rearrange everything. Oh, and the lighter is covered in sticky marshmallow goo. But the primary difference between say, Destin and the Oregon Coast is that the sun is like permanently on vacation up here. Which means that it is freezing. I don’t really know exactly what the temperatures are, but let me paint the picture for you. I am sitting on the beach in my crazy creek in jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweater, a jacket, a wool hat, wool socks and hiking boots, while my oldest son is wearing a swim suit and a t shirt playing in the waves. All day I am thinking, surely he is going to die of hypothermia. Or something. I mean, I am considering heading back to camp and adding long johns under my jeans. That’s how cold I am. Mary Polly and Ben were somewhere in between. Rolling up their pants to feel the freezing cold ocean water on their feet and rolling in the sand like puppies. Simon never ventured to get wet, but was as ecstatic about the sand as the others. So here’s my conclusion. Kids love the beach. They trip out over a giant sandbox and rolling waves so much that they don’t care that it’s not warm. Ben’s take: Hey, we don’t have to worry about sunscreen!
So this is our beach week. Taido is loving the cooler weather. He was done with the desert heat. And someone told me that it is like 101 degrees in Arkansas so we need to be thankful for our gloriously cool days. I am thankful. I am just going to have to put some more clothes on.
July 23, 2008
Ashland, Ashland! Wherefore art thou so far from my homeland? When shall I ever see you again, and under what strange set of circumstances could it possibly pass that I am able to return to your streets? At the end of time when the Lord’s beloved all gather to the fullest of fullness, will it be in the courtyard where your three houses of magic converge? Or perhaps on the grasses of the parks surrounding you? In the sycamore grove? Will the dining room of the Winchester be transformed to accommodate the whole company of saints to dine on pear and mascarpone cheese filled crepes with champagne vanilla bean glaze and mimosas? Oh Ashland, surely I will never forget thee. Or how my heart swelled to the point of bursting twice with laughter and once with tears. I will always remember you with a soft sigh of longing.
July 24, 2008
shakespeare festival (part 1 of 3)
Though I had been looking forward to attending my dear friend’s fortieth birthday party at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for sometime, I did not immediately fall under Ashland’s enchanting powers. The neighboring town of Medford was a perfect nightmare to negotiate. (Looking back, Taido and I decided that Medford is the external cost of blue collar industry that enables its southern neighbor of Ashland to be the charming gem of a place to visit that it is.) We set up camp on a lake nearby before Taido and the kids dropped me off for the weekend, and part of me wanted to stay at camp with them and just meet all those strangers later at the play. I had not seen my friend Laura for at least five years and a little insecure part of me thought that maybe she wasn’t still going to like me. And then there was the staying in a house with ten other people and sharing a room…even a bed with a total stranger. It had been a while since I had been around people. Maybe I had forgotten how to be sociable. So I was a little jittery when Taido dropped me in the street and drove off. I ascended the lime green stairs of the yellow house where we were staying and was much relieved when Laura answered the door. Seeing the face of a dear friend after a long absence is a telling moment. It is amazing how the years just melt away and the comfort of shared experience of long ago rises up to create a safe haven of familiarity. As she ushered me into a parlor with a high ceiling full of her other dear friends and family, I determined to put all my nervousness behind me and allow myself to be swept away by the place. We introduced ourselves, each explaining how we had the happy fortune to know this blessed girl. And I remembered as each girl was talking that of course a girl such as this friend of mine would have collected around her a group of friends who are as special as she is. That I am camping all over the country with my family is hardly a drop in the bucket of collective experience of this group of women. How many stories could be told about such wonders as living in Malaysia, taking two teenage sons out of school for the year to travel the whole world, living with your family at camps, cruising the Rhine river, teaching in Germany, getting married this summer or being an annual attendant and member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival…um, can you guess which gal I asked the most questions. Yes, the high school drama teacher who sees a loads of plays and was our resident expert at the OSF. (That’s how she referred to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival…like they are old friends. Can you imagine my envy?) She was very patient with me as I asked her about three million questions about the festival. About the acting company and all the different variations she has seen of Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night. She will be back in Ashland in two weeks with her family and I would really like for her to take me with her in her pocket, but I can only imagine that she will greatly enjoy her weekend without that hic girl from Arkansas badgering her.
Jitters aside, everyone rushing around to get ready to go to dinner and the play gave me a moment to breathe and prepare to be enchanted. (I wasn’t rushing around because I had already learned from my new BFF that you don’t have to dress up for the festival…and since the theater is outside, jeans are even preferable once the sun goes down and the chilly night air blows over the walls of the Elizabethan Stage.)
We had a lovely, if somewhat rushed dinner, sitting at a table outside with the waters of Ashland Creek rolling along beside us. Then as we meandered up the street to the play (at this point I was downright giddy) we ran into my family! They had been in the park seeing a free performance and the magic of the night just fell into my lap when we realized that because we had an extra ticket to Comedy of Errors that we had been trying unsuccessfully to sell, Mary Polly could come along with me to the play. And of course, part of the wonder was that the play turned out to be the most perfect one for her to see. Mary Polly was already predisposed to love Comedy of Errors because not only is it hysterical, it is Shakespeare’s shortest play, but Comedy of Errors rendered into a Western Musical was belly-aching HI-larious. I think I may have been distracting in how much and how loud I laughed. Besides being caught up in the moment of being in a REAL LIVE ELIZABETHAN THEATER and seeing SHAKESPEARE, Hello! My daughter was laughing with me…following the language and asking the right questions at the right moments. She was getting it. Do you know how great that is? Your first experience with Shakespeare can be key to your lifelong enjoyment of his brilliance. I had to overcome some very bad Shakespeare lectures from high school before I could fall properly in love with him in college. I feel certain that this rendition of Comedy of Errors could supplant anyone’s previous frustrating experiences reading through Shakespeare. Every actor was brilliant. On. Usually when I see a Shakespeare play (don’t you like how I write that like it happens all the time?) I am drawn to one or two characters and the rest are sort of marginal. But at the OSF, these people know their Shakespeare. The actors are playing in multiple Shakespeare plays all year. They all share a green room that is underneath the theaters and is connected by tunnels from each of the three theaters. So every character is playing as well as the lead. At any given time, I would look to the side where the main action wasn’t happening and the characters there would be on. Alive. The motion on the largely vertical set of Comedy of Errors built throughout the play until you were wondering how on earth anyone could possibly be certain of where they were supposed to be going. I cannot imagine how complicated the blocking must have been of all that activity. But the effect was so much fun. I was still laughing as we drove Mary Polly back to the campground and I quickly tucked her into the quiet camper before returning to the house. In fact, being far too giddy to fall asleep, it was after 2am before I finally calmed down enough from the excitement of the evening to doze off into the luxurious sleep of a mother whose children are safely away with their father.
July 25, 2008
shakespeare festival (part 2 of 3)
Thankfully for me, my roommate in Ashland was an early morning runner, which of course I am not. So when she left to run I took over the entire bed and slept luxuriously until I just like sitting up and reading my book in bed. I pulled back the curtain to let in the sun and the lovely view of the surrounding hills and just sank back onto my pillow to enjoy the quiet morning. The novelty of no one needing anything from me. When I finally showered and descended, lots of the girls had already left to walk into town for coffee and breakfast, so I walked in with two who were going to a 10am tour of the theaters, an event which must be booked ahead or I would have joined them. (Something for next time!) I got a cup of coffee and a blueberry scone and walked down to Lithia Park, wherein I got lost for the next two hours. This park begins at the edge of the staircase that leads you to the courtyard where all the theaters converge and extends about two miles up Ashland Creek. It is an absolute jewel of a park and I had tears in my eyes almost immediately as I walked in and around its trees, over its romantic bridges, up the steps of a Florentine fountain, around duck ponds and a Japanese garden and through the sycamore grove where a wedding was to be held that afternoon. I sat for a while on one of the hundreds of perfectly placed benches in the park. Each one is tucked into a little cranny where you can lose yourself for an hour or an entire day if you wish. I sat and wrote in my journal with the music of the running creek drowning out the whole world. I thought about how if I lived in this place that I would resolve to spend a spell of time upon each of the park’s benches in order to take in each spot’s different advantages, and maybe I would only come out of the park when the horn blows and the flag is raised signaling the next play’s start. Or maybe I would venture out to Agave for one of the most delicious tacos I have ever tasted, made on a corn tortilla so fresh it is still soft and warm. But alas, I do not live in Ashland and I wasn’t sure when I would return so I tried to soak up as much of that park as I could on Saturday morning and put aside my imagination’s efforts to plan return trips. Just enjoy the moment. It is a long recurring fault of mine that I have been known to wither away precious hours in a place for all the thinking of what might be. Who else must see this? How can I get in touch with Taido and tell him that he MUST take the kids to Agave for a fish taco? If only my sister could see this food. If only Sarabeth could sit in this theater. If only every one in the whole world could walk the lanes in this park, surely world peace would prevail. It’s a family fault. My brother is currently in Kenya with a group of people with whom he works because he wanted so much to share with others what he himself had already seen. The beautiful spirit of the Kenyan people, the Lord’s glory rising in the Kenyan church and the abject poverty in the land could only be understood fully by going and seeing and touching. Certainly wanting to give the whole world a ticket to Comedy of Errors and a picnic in Lithia Park isn’t quite as noble as a desire that they experience Kenya but both wishes root from the same core desire. To bless another with an experience that moved us.
As the morn melted away and the afternoon sun lingered high, I took my sign that it was time to meet some of the others for a picnic lunch in the park. We took our tacos and chips and sat on and around a rock wall, spilling onto the grass and visiting all the afternoon. I got to visit extensively with my sweet friend, with whom everyone present wanted to be of course, but she graciously managed to move and flow about all weekend, giving each girl in her turn a longer moment. I am afraid I completely monopolized her on Saturday afternoon. Even after the six of us in the park decided that it was time to move on and find the others, think towards preparing dinner and getting ready for Othello (be still my heart at the very mention of such a masterpiece!), I still ambled near my friend, talking as we walked. But we had years to catch up on. We have both given birth once more since we last saw one another, and miraculously in the same season, so that we both now have two-year olds. Hers is a darling little girl with golden curls and sparkling blue eyes. So precious. So there was much to discuss, and so luxurious to be able to talk and talk without interruptions from children or telephones or anything from real life. The whole afternoon was like a moment in time suspended above all mundane and tedious happenings. It was only as we began to head back to the house to cook dinner that we were all brought back to reality by a call informing us that Laura’s mother had experienced a fainting spell, from which she was recovering at a nearby hospital. So Laura and her sister rushed off to the hospital and the rest of us returned to the house, to which they all soon followed, Laura’s mother happily recovered from what was perhaps dehydration or more likely, being overwhelmed to the point of collapsing by the delights of Ashland. We had a beautiful dinner of fresh salmon, sourdough bread and salad around a large dining table, followed by chocolate mousse and a pear almond torte. Both birthday treats came from the nearby Apple Cellar Bakery and were perfectly melt-in-your-mouth delish. The crust of the torte in particular was something from a fairy tale. Other worldly.
Such a wonderful day, and the best still yet to come.
July 26, 2008
shakespeare festival (part 3 of 3)
After our dinner at home on Saturday, it was off to Othello. Three girls were seeing The Clay Cart which is an ancient Indian play, which they enjoyed, but I cannot imagine having missed Othello. It was the only play of the weekend that was pure Shakespeare, in full Elizabethan garb, not a word of the script changed. We were all apprehensive, having read the play. I read all three plays back at Viento State Park, and I had cried the day I read Othello, falling into a deep funk over how dark our hearts can be. So I thought I knew what I was in for as the darkness covered the stage and the grim Iago filled the night air with a dread that rose from his sinister soliloquies. Seeing Othello may very well be one of the most powerful experiences of my entire life. I am prone to gross exaggeration I know and to extremes as far as descriptions go, which makes my recommendation of a thing hold perhaps less weight than if I measured my words of compliment more carefully. But put that aside and just know that this play, this night, this cast and this experience will be something I will still be speaking of when I am (very) old and (more) gray. If I could play Desdemona with so much eloquence or Emilia with such wry timing, I would perhaps do nothing else in life. I sat on the very edge of my seat for the entire three hours. I was sad that we had to stop for intermission…not wanting the momentum to be broken even for a minute. I might have distracted those around me with my sighs or had the noise of hope from my heart been audible it would have shaken the stage with my longing for the action not to go as I already knew that it would, and as it must of course, go. If it did not move to its inevitable tragic end then of course, Shakespeare would not be the playwright that he is. Timeless and brilliant. He did not shy away from the darkest places in man’s heart. The most powerful moments of the play were when words were uttered that I could have believed, or worse, that I could have said. At the beginning when Desdemona’s father basically disowafns her, his words to her and Othello completely devastated me. To purposely admit such bitterness into a relationship with one so dear to you is so sad, and yet it was the tip of the iceberg as far as the grief that would pass over that stage that night. So much brokenness and devastating consequences. It was only after we discussed long into the night the scary Iago, the duped Othello, the beautiful Desdemona and many words and scenes from the play that I begin to also remember how I had been completely taken in by the exquisite costumes, the well placed bits of color and the powerful use of light or lack thereof. Every detail down to the last blackout with the loud thunder of a drum served its purpose in stringing me along, hanging on every word. I read in my journal that is littered with quotes on traveling the following morning that sometimes you just have to go to know. This trite remark could be applied to so many experiences in life, but if you have the opportunity in life to see Othello, played in Ashland, and especially this particular season, do not let it pass you by.
When we finally settled down and went to our beds, of course I could never fall asleep after such a night, my roommate and I talked for hours. After we realized that we both grew up in Young Life families, we had many comparisons to make. It is wonderful to discover someone with whom you have a lot in common and it turns out that we share much more than our mutual love for Laura. Funny things like that we both like Tom’s toothpaste. And when we finally stopped chattering and I grew sleepy enough to stop seeing Desdemona’s flowing white dressing gown in my mind’s eye, I drifted into sleep hardly being able to believe that the next day I would actually get to see another play. It is like a buffet of entirely too much good food, so that you must continue to eat even after you are full because you will be sad at the treats you did not yet get to taste. The delights of Sunday would be like candy after the full palette of Othello, but really nice candy. Dark chocolate from a specialty chocolatier.
Yes, I am glad our tragedy is being sandwiched between two comedies, remarked one of the gals present. After our aforementioned glorious Sunday morning brunch at the Winchester, several of our company had to begin to make their way back to California, which left four of us to attend the final play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Could our time in Ashland have been more perfectly planned? To end with such a fun play, and one of my favorites to boot. And if it were not enough to end on such a note, this season’s version of Midsummer Night was set in the 60s and 70s. Yes, the mechanicals arrived in a volkswagon bus painted with multi-colored flowers and Bottom had long wavy hair, red velvet bell bottoms and sunglasses. Friends, he was beyond hysterical. Just the memory of him is eliciting a giggle even at this very moment. Add in a Duke that could have hailed from South Chicago, cross dressing fairies, Shakespeare’s eye for the foolishness in all of us and a happy ending…then you have a well spent final afternoon in the fairyland that is Ashland. Even better, one of our company knew of and arranged our invitation to a talk that a Westmont Shakespeare professor was giving (in a park!) before the play. He was leading a group from Westmont through the same series of plays we had been attending and he was leading a post-Othello discussion and giving a pre-Midsummer Night lecture. So great. I appreciated all that he had to say and he prepared us well for our afternoon, even stating that the fool says in his heart…there are no such thing as fairies. It was a precious and perfect addition, fitting in beautifully with the magical flow of our weekend.
After the play, we grabbed more fish tacos (of course) and then drove the four hours back (talking nonstop) to where my friend lives and where our husbands and children were enjoying one another’s company, the pop up welcoming me in their driveway. My kids were super sad to be leaving early the next morning after just meeting up with their long lost friends, but we would all be together again the next weekend when we would be passing back through on our way back to Vancouver. I feel like Viola when she says to Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love,
This is not real life. It is a stolen season.
Tis absolutely true of my life right now and most especially of the three glorious days I had the fortune to spend in Ashland.
July 30, 2008
If you are going camping this weekend or sometime soon and you happen to be near a Trader Joe’s, as I happily happen to find myself again, then you might like to discover, as I have, that you can get several days’ worth of relatively easy and healthy camping meals in one quick stop. Cooking on a camp stove is of course different from being in my kitchen, which I love and miss, but I think I have finally settled into sort of a happy compromise between what I am used to and what is possible for a summer of camping. Still, Trader Joe’s has made some of those compromises much easier. For example, letting the children roast hot dogs over the fire once a week is much easier to do when I am buying all beef nitrate free Trader Joe’s hot dogs, Trader Joe’s whole wheat hot dog buns and Trader Joe’s organic ketchup.
So the routine is that I usually roll up to a Trader Joe’s after we’ve set up in a new town and have pretty much used up all our groceries. It seems like it is usually in the afternoon. And the kids have to help or wait in the car. For their trouble, we usually get a box of dark chocolate ice cream bars or ice cream sandwiches made with two chocolate chip cookies. Both of these novelties come in boxes of four and are a deal at $1.99 when you consider that everyone is begging to go to the Cold Stone next door which would cost us our dinner.
So after the ice cream, we have…
Dinner:
2 packages frozen gyoza (they come in pork, chicken, shrimp and vegetable)
1 bottle gyoza dipping sauce
2 packages prepared sushi
1 box organic ginger snaps
I fry the gyoza in a couple of tablespoons of oil in my cast iron skillet on the camp stove. Dinner is served.
Breakfast:
Coffee
1 package whole wheat bagels, sliced and toasted on the griddle
Organic cream cheese
Angelcots (a rare apricot in season right now that my kids are gobbling)
Apple Cereal Bars
Greek Style Yogurt (We LOVE this stuff. It is so creamy. And we love all the flavors, which include honey, fig, strawberry, apricot-mango, pomegranate and blueberry.)
Lunch:
Baguette
Cheese (goat cheese brie and sharp cheddar)
Raspberries
Fuji Apples
Sesame Pita Chips and Dip (We alternate between hummus and cilantro-yogurt dip)
Snacks:
Bananas
Cherry tomatoes
Organic animal crackers
Dinner:
Whole Wheat Organic Penne Pasta
Organic Marinara Pasta Sauce
1 package fully cooked meatballs
Packaged Caesar Salad or Spinach Salad
Charles Shaw Shiraz
Breakfast:
Coffee
Whole Wheat Buttermilk Pancakes with Chocolate Chips
Maple Syrup
Lunch:
Whole Wheat Crackers
Blueberries and Cherries
Cheese
Whole wheat pita pockets with Tuna Salad (made with white chunk tuna, organic mayonnaise and hard boiled eggs)
Snacks:
Flax seed tortilla chips and salsa
Roasted almonds
Any number of trail mixes
Dinner:
Various Canned Soups for the kids: the boys pick chicken noodle, Mary Polly picks an Udon Noodle bowl
Instant Indian Food (curried lentils) and whole wheat tandoori for Taido and me
OR
Hot Dogs for the kids and Cilantro Chicken Sausages for Taido and me, which I save half of for my eggs in the morning.
Random red table wine
Dark Chocolate, Cinnamon Graham Crackers and Homemade Style Marshmallows
Breakfast:
Eggs, Bacon (nitrate free) and Skillet Potatoes
Eat lunch out (Baja Fresh, anyone?) and then go back to Trader Joe’s again….everything listed is Trader Joe’s own brand right down to the marshmallows. You cannot beat this place.
July 31, 2008
i kinda miss that beaver state
i always think i will come back to something that i missed writing about, but i never actually do. like i thought i would go back and write about our fourth of july, which we spent hiking the waterfalls that pour into the columbia river from the oregon side. but i never did. and now it’s like august already. and i thought i would write more about being on the oregon coast, because i spent my writing time there on shakespeare. but of course i haven’t. and then i missed writing about our weekend visiting dear friends before heading back to canada, and now, sadly, oregon seems oh sooo far away. and i have had a minor adventure or two this week-mostly in various berry fields, being back on my own with the four chinos. but somehow it is hard to be motivated to come back to those things which seem to have happened so long ago, especially when there are new moments holding my attention. even if they are not as interesting. right now i am totally preoccupied with the fact that it is rainy and cold. we are back in our long johns and icebreakers, huddling up in the pop up or traipsing off to find warm bookstores and coffee shops. which is not terribly fascinating, but nevertheless, it is where we are. it feels a lot like we are back at the beginning of our pacific northwest adventures. beautiful green campgrounds. cold and damp to the bones.
but before you begin to feel sorry for me, let me tell you that in two days we will be checking into a condo in whistler, b.c. a gift from my mother-in-law, who, thank the Lord, is spoiling me rotten. perhaps, after a week in a real bed, i will be ready for the final countdown. we will camp one more week near vancouver b.c. before we begin the long drive home.
maybe we will have wi-fi for our week in whistler and i will tell you all about those berries.
August 2, 2008
…big giant rocks.
whistler rockslide
Not even this was going to get in between me and my shower.
Yesterday morning, Taido gets this phone call and I overhear him saying things like,
Oh, no!
Oh my goodness!
Well, what about Monday? If we wait until Monday, can we still stay for a whole week?
And that’s when I started to panic. I was down to less than 24 hours before a fall that the condo in Whistler was going to break. I just didn’t think there was anyway I could go 72 instead.
So he hangs up and I am like…
WHAT! What is it? Is there a problem with our condo???
him: No, there is a problem with the road. There’s been a massive rockslide and the road won’t be open until Monday.
The only other way into Whistler is like an 8 hour detour around.
me: Yep, I’ll take that.
him: What!
me: Yes, the detour. I will TAKE THE DETOUR! Let’s pack up and leave today. We can camp along the way and then we can still check into our CONDO tomorrow AS PLANNED!!!
him: Well, ok. I’m game.
So we drove a very crazy scary and LONG road yesterday. There were like a million road signs about winding upcoming turns and very steep grades and falling rocks, and we went over about 25 one lane bridges made out of what looked like 2X4s, but whatever. We made it. The park ranger at our EMPTY campground 20 miles north of Whistler told us that usually the park would have been full by the time we arrived because Monday is a major Canadian holiday. She congratulated us on making the effort to spend what was sure to be a grand weekend in Whistler. She has no idea.
August 4, 2008
There are a lot of things I love in life. In fact, I find I am constantly talking about some little thing I just love. Or saying, you just have to try this. Or you must read this. I have a lot of favorites.
I love super bike trails like the ones that network all over Whistler, BC. I am still so excited every time I watch Ben on his bike. The other day he said, Mom, I think I am pretty much used to falling down on my bike now. And that’s a good thing, because he constantly looks like he is about to crash into someone. Yesterday we got lost in Lost Lake Park (fitting, eh?) and ended up taking him on some pretty serious mountain bike trails yesterday, and he did great, but he was scaring me the entire time.
I also like French cheese. Chianti. A thin crust pizza with carmalized onions.
I love a good book. I am reading two great ones right now. I started both in the rain last week as I sat in a slightly damp camp chair under the awning of the pop-up in Birch Bay State Park.
But right now, I have to say…what I really love…even in a place as grand as Whistler, British Columbia…is hot running water. Hot running water is really my favorite. If in six months I am complaining about some ridiculous annoyance, which inevitably I will be, someone please say to me, Do you remember how last summer something as simple as hot running water could make you as happy as a little girl with a new puppy? I might be mad at you for your impertinence and lack of sympathy for the fact that I have a middle schooler, but it will be worth it to bring me back down to earth. To remind me that it is nothing less than a miracle, a surreal luxury even, to have hot running water all day long and in multiple places. Particularly in the shower, the kitchen and in the blessed washing machine.
Friends, I have been trying to limit our expensive trips to the laundromat by stomping our clothes (and Simon’s diapers) in a large tub. Actually, I make the children stomp them, an abuse about which I am sure they will be telling their therapists years from now. Then I ring them out and hang them up. They don’t get super clean, but they get clean enough for camping. But in the last couple of weeks I haven’t had dry (or hot) enough weather to get them dry, so the clothes have been piling up. I even had to buy some disposable diapers, which just irritates me when I am so close to making it through the summer without using them.
But this week. Oh how clean we all are. And our clothes are so clean. I am even washing all our smelly towels and bedding. The pop up might even smell clean by the time I get through with all this washing. I am sure the condo rental people are going to be all, What on earth is the deal with this water bill? Did we have a major pipe break the first week in August?
I don’t even mind the dishes one little bit. If I work up a sweat cleaning the kitchen, I just go take another bath.
August 5, 2008
A couple of nights ago, after the kids went to bed, since we have more than 60 square feet of pop up camper to live in this week, Taido and I watched a movie. I know. We are really living large out here in Whistler. But I mention it because I loved the movie. I loved it almost as much as I love hot running water, but maybe not quite. But still. I really liked it.
Taido saw it last fall and I remembered that he had talked a lot about it and I filed it somewhere in one of the crevices of my brain that I wanted to see it.
Lars and the Real Girl is about a guy who orders a mannequin for a girlfriend and then believes and behaves as though she is real. I think it is set in Ontario, or some place that looked really cold. I sort of shivered the whole time I was watching, which is appropriate I think. I hate it when a movie is filmed in like New York or Chicago and you never in the whole movie, even if it takes place in all different seasons of the year, see that those places are very very cold for most of the year. But whatever.
What I absolutely loved about this movie. What made me feel all fuzzy and teary-eyed and warm inside was that the whole town ends up taking Lars’ therapist’s advice and playing along like his doll friend is real. The whole movie is a picture to me of what community is supposed to be like. Maybe it is because I am really missing my community back home that this outpouring of support from what seems like the whole town touched me so deeply, but I’m not sure. I think that at any given moment, this film would have left me with a wistful longing for a life well-lived…among others.
August 6, 2008
So the first thing Ben asks whenever we arrive at a new place is,
Is this a bear encounter?
I am not even exactly sure how this became the way he asks if we are in bear country. It started three years ago when we were camping in Colorado and he mis-read a sign about bear country. While the rest of us are sort of enchanted with the possibility of seeing a bear, he is pretty much freaked out by it. Cole capitalizes ruthlessly on this fear by constantly pointing out bear tracks and scat, sometimes real but more often invented just to torture his brother.
You know immediately if you are in bear country when you are camping by the trash can situation. If there are bears in the area, the trash cans are tricky to open and you might even have metal food storage lockers in your campsite. Lots of places, National Parks, in particular, have all kinds of signage about how to safely camp with bears. How to behave if you encounter a bear. What to do and what not to do. Threats of serious fines for leaving food or cooking items or anything else out that might attract a bear. I am usually annoyed by what seems like overkill on the bear info, because it ensures that Ben will be freaking out about bears around every corner. And honestly, we have not encountered bears or seen evidence of bears in any of our campsites. We saw two bears in The Grand Tetons and Yellowstone, but that was because we were out early driving around looking for them. And still they were super far away. No danger to Ben or anyone else.
So of course when we arrived in Whistler and saw the trash situation at our condo with bear signage, Ben’s eyes grew wide and he asked in his whiniest voice,
Is this a bear encounter?
Of course not, we’re not camping. We’re in a house. You do NOT have to worry about bears, Ben.
I didn’t give it another thought. I thought that all the village trash cans being bear-proof was a little ridiculous, because if we aren’t seeing bears in our campgrounds, come on. Is a bear really going to walk right through the middle of town??
Then the next morning Taido comes back from biking and says he rode right past a bear on the road and it totally freaked him out. Then we go to the farmers’ market where they are passing out all kinds of info on Living with Bears, Be Bear Aware, Bear Conservation. Then our neighbors told Taido that they’ve seen bears in the condo courtyard. And THEN, just so Ben will be scarred for life, tonight we went for a walk after dinner on a highly populated bike path and a HUGE BLACK BEAR came out of the woods and RAN ACROSS THE PATH RIGHT IN FRONT OF US. Well, like 100 feet in front of us. But still. Ben went nuts. He started screaming and crying and all the time Cole is saying,
Guys! Guys! Guys! Didn’t you read BEAR AWARE??? You’re supposed to just calmly back away like I’m doing.
Total recall in a moment of panic. There’s a skill I wish I had.
August 6, 2008
ingrid’s*
We only ate out at a restaurant one time while we were in Whistler, so I tried to choose wisely from the descriptions of places in my guidebook. We went to Ingrid’s, a little deli with outdoor seating and variety of mostly vegetarian foods. Fortunately for Cole, Ingrid’s did have a burger. But Ben and Mary Polly got vegetarian chili. Taido had maybe the best vegetarian burger I have ever tasted. It had lentils in it. I really love lentils. But I won. I had a falafel wrap, a tomato wrap filled with falafel, red onion, cucumber, avocado, shredded carrots and tzaziki. I will be trying to make this when I get home, because it was delish.
August 7, 2008
So, Taido’s been reading aloud at night for the last couple weeks instead of me. At first I wasn’t really sure why, but I thought that it might have something to do with the fact that I started King Arthur after the boys began to lose interest in Anne on like book number three in the series. And maybe it was just bugging Taido that I wasn’t reading all those jousting scenes with the emphasis a man might put on them. Or maybe it was that Taido really loved saying night after night, And then…he smote off his head in one blow! You should hear him say it. It’s hysterical. When he gets the book out, he usually says something like, Who’s going to lose their head tonight? And then Cole is all, Sir Kay! Sir Kay! He’s an IDIOT! I have to say though, that I am enjoying King Arthur in spite of myself. The night Taido read the legend of Tristan and Isolde, I actually cried. Their story is so beautiful. And I loved the story of Sir Gawain marrying an ugly hag out of the honor of a promise made to save King Arthur. Then his honor turns her back into her true self, a fair maiden. That night I dreamed about being turned from my current earthie hippy (read: dirty) state into a clean beautiful damsel. I woke up and I was like, I think I am dreaming about the dark ages. Which could be because I am so tired at night that I am already half asleep while Taido is reading. Or maybe it’s that sometimes our life right now kind of resembles the dark ages with regards to amenities.
But seriously, is there anything sweeter than a dad reading aloud to his kids? While we were camped in the yard of our friends in Oregon, I went inside one night to brush my teeth while Taido was reading King Arthur and I walked past our friend reading The Hobbit to his family. So sweet.
So this week, as I already mentioned, Taido went to the video store and came back with a bunch of King Arthur movies. Ah ha…his excitement over reading King Arthur revealed. He just couldn’t wait for the movie version. And I thought back to when I first started reading Anne this summer to the kids and realized that, I too, could not wait to finish Anne of Green Gables so that we could all watch the movie together. That movie is a huge part of my childhood. Watching it over and over with my sister is more than just a fond memory, it is like the essence of so much of the time we spent together. Every time Mary Polly pulls it out and watches it again in the car (with Simon), I just feel warm and fuzzy all over. I am not really sure if I will feel that way about watching adaptations of King Arthur, but Mary Polly and I are outnumbered by boys and this is one of those times that they get to win out over us.
August 9, 2008
Picking berries is one of the greatest pastimes ever. Besides being great entertainment, the reward for your work is so great. If you love berries like I do, and please don’t tell me if you don‘t, then you should visit the pacific northwest the last week in July or the first week of August every year. Before I had ever been out this way, I can remember picking puny little Arkansas blackberries with my grandparents and my grandfather boasting that where he came from, the blackberries were bigger than his thumb. He would hold up his GI-normous thumb for effect as he said it. Even as a little girl, I thought he was exaggerating. But he was right. The berries are bigger and sweeter and more bountiful out here than in any other place in the world. I relished the berry season every summer when we lived out here, making more jars of jam than we could possibly eat in a year. I gave it to every one I knew.
So, in the past couple of weeks, when it has not been raining, we have been picking berries. We have now picked strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and marionberries. A couple of weeks ago I went to a farmers’ market with my friend in Oregon and we bought a mixed flat of berries, which our two families promptly devoured. Then she let me trash her kitchen making blackberry pies with blackberries that the kids picked on the side of the country road on which she and her family live. You can’t imagine how good that pie tasted to me. Blackberry pie is my favorite dessert on earth, and I haven’t made a pie all summer, so it was with great delight that I rolled crust and zested lemons along with the army of little helpers I had all around me.
Last week while we were camping in Birch Bay, we limited ourselves to picking only 10 pounds of berries at a time. We learned our lesson with the strawberries back in June. It takes us about 2 days to devour 10 pounds, and then we go back for more.
If we aren’t picking berries, we are buying berry desserts from local bakeries…blackberry buckle bread, blueberry crumb bars, raspberry oatmeal bars, to name a few. Or we are driving by fields and fields full of berries. It just makes me so happy to see the abundance of berries.
And as a special bonus, because I just love to share treasures with you, I will tell you that a favorite children’s book of mine is about picking berries. If you love to pick berries, you will love Jamberry. Come to think of it, at about this time last year I was stopping to pick wild raspberries in Colorado while Taido was driving our family up a mountain. I just can’t stop myself.
August 11, 2009
I wrote this yesterday, but what I would really like to post about is the extremely convoluted way we are getting internet right now, but I don’t have time. So let me just say that this is it on internet for the week. I have a couple of things coming up on their own, but I won’t be around to reply to or enjoy your comments until Saturday when we return to civilization. So peace out from the moon.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
North Cascades National Park
So we left Whistler yesterday around 11am. We said goodbye to Kyle and Amber who came up Thursday evening and blessed us by playing with our kids and providing adult company for me during their impromptu 2 night stay with us. I couldn’t have asked for a better gift this week. When we got to our new campsite last night, Ben said I wish we could go back to Whistler. Man, I loved Whistler. When I asked him what he had loved most about being in Whistler, he answered, Kyle and Amber were there. Then the other two said that, Yes, their favorite thing about Whistler was Kyle and Amber too. I didn’t even bother to explain that Whistler and the Hendricksons didn’t necessarily go together. I just thanked the Lord one more time for the chance the kids had to be around someone besides me, and vice versa.
In addition to helping us load up all our gear yesterday morning, ahem…in the rain, Amber and Kyle rode bikes with big kids, different ones at different times…oh, the novelty of individual attention, looked at the hundreds of drawings the kids have done over the summer, listened to their stories and even cooked us dinner. Kyle also carried Simon in the backpack, let Simon lead him all over the beach filling up his bucket with water and then carrying it to where he wanted it to go. He threw everyone on the bed, pushed them on the tire swing and carried them on his shoulders…all multiple times. Shouts of Kyle, Kyle, my turn, my turn! Or push me, push me next! could be heard all over Whistler over the few days they were there. While he played his heart out (I’m sure he needed some extra sleep after they went home), Amber and I got to visit, which was life-giving to me. It was just easier to tackle Whistler with two extra adults.
We also said goodbye to our Whistler neighbors, in particular a darling little gal that played with Mary Polly and helped us to finally break in the croquet set we’d been toting around all summer. Even though Amber actually won the match, Mary Polly and Chloe both had their share of the lead throughout the game.
Cole discovered Canadian football. Simon vegged out on Sesame Street. Mary Polly made yummy cookies all by herself. Ben met someone who speaks his language, which is party. And Taido actually had some sort of breakthrough on his thesis. He came home one evening and actually said out loud to all of us (including Kyle and Amber), I was brilliant today! I had hot running water, constant internet access and adult company. It was brilliant.
I don’t know if it was the friendly neighbors, Kyle and Amber’s visit, the fantasy like village of Whistler, or just having a condo for a week, but probably all of the above helped me drive away yesterday in the falling rain and actually feel energized for what was ahead. Even the unknown. Not so many days ago, I was feeling less than ready to face the unknowns, the new adventures, the many empty tomorrows that were checkering the path between me and my homecoming. But yesterday, as we drove down the sea-to-sky highway, which is, by the way, unbelievably beautiful, I was feeling just a weensy bit more adventurous. I didn’t feel quite like throwing my explore journal out the window when there were five quotes in a row about the necessity of unknown in travel or the beauty that lies in the lack of a routine. Which was good. Because we headed yesterday to North Cascades National Park, which is pretty far from anything. It is another lush green (damp) mountainous forest, with ferns and moss and slugs and bugs. There is a darling general store within biking distance, but we are at least 60 miles from a major town. I think if we hadn’t had the combination of gifts that was and will always be to us, Whistler, last week, I would be in danger of a major breakdown right now. But instead, I even weathered with relative ease what we have fondly begun to call Transition Day, which is better than calling it the day we move everything and set up in a new place and I almost kill everyone, including myself. Simon was screaming his head off last night when we were trying to get him changed into his pajamas and settled down for bed. The tension was growing in the camper as Simon’s screams escalated, and I was able to calmly say, I don’t think Simon is having a good Transition Day instead of, Will someone please pass me a knife? Friends that is nothing less than a miracle.
Everyone fell asleep (except Simon) while I was singing to Simon and trying to calm his little post fit hiccups. While I held him against my chest in the dark and listened to the sound of the raindrops on the pop up, I thanked the good Lord once again for our camper to keep us dry, for bringing us safely to a new place and for just a little over a week before we start for home.
This is the Day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.
August 11, 2008
river rocks and firewood*
at North Cascades National Park
The rain finally cleared off enough late in the day yesterday for us to take our first hike in the area. We hiked the “To Know A Tree” trail, with lots o info about trees, and that connected to the River Loop trail which ran along the Skagit River aways, leading to a rock bank where we stopped, had Clif bars and threw rocks in the river for about an hour. It never ceases to amaze me how long boys can be entertained by throwing rocks. Simon was so excited that he kept accidentally stepping into the river and ended up getting his shoes and pants all wet.
I just sat on the rocks and enjoyed the scenery. The Skagit River and Diablo Lake are cold glacier fed waters, which for some reason turns them this mesmerizing emerald green color. The rock bank was all white rock, and the Western hemlocks and Douglas firs lined the opposite bank. North Cascades National Park is the least visited national park in the U.S., which is surprising because it is just as beautiful as many we’ve been to. It has more glaciers than Glacier National Park. Taido is hoping to hike to a glacier while we are here, but ahem, it is a weensy bit far. We’ll see.
After we got back from our hike, I fixed one of our standard Trader Joe’s dinners and then Cole built a fire while the water heated for the dishes. Then the kids fought during dish duty (Mary Polly poured water all over Cole and Cole started throwing the dishes into the bushes), so we didn’t get to have s’mores, but we enjoyed the campfire anyway. It had been a while since we’d had one, but we don’t have to conserve wood this week because yesterday morning Taido and the kids gathered up firewood “Rex Walls style.” Taido drove the van around while the kids followed him around gathering up wood left behind by the weekenders and throwing it in the back of the van. They are all very proud of the huge pile they managed to amass.
Because I’ve always found it difficult to leave a good campfire, Mary Polly and I stayed out even after the boys turned in, drinking our tea and talking about her upcoming birthday trip to Victoria. (She and I are taking the tour from Seattle to Victoria this coming Sunday.) She was particularly enthralled by the fact that we are going to have high tea while we are there. I told her all about it because I have been there once before, the summer I was pregnant with her. She was concerned that we don’t really have fancy clothes to wear. In fact, she started making plans to doll up my straw sun hat. She also said that I must NOT carry my backpack because hanging a backpack on the back of your chair during tea is definitely NOT fancy. There was a sad moment when we were talking about whale watching on the boat ride and I realized for the first time that my binoculars had been stolen. And the insurance claim all filed, bummer! But that was soon overshadowed by Mary Polly’s joy. She said that we would have to make the next few days fun so that they would go by quickly. Oh, the joy of anticipation! We finally let the fire die down and made one last trek to the bathroom before climbing into the pop up and into our warm sleeping bags.
August 14, 2008
number nine*
Mary Polly turned nine today. I love that she is grown up enough to say, Oh, a William Shakespeare book! with genuine enthusiasm and still enough of a little girl to be equally excited about a new sleeping beauty Playmobil set. Simon could not wait for her to open it so he could get his hands on the “neigh neigh,” and she is old enough to enjoy letting him see it. She directed Ben and Simon as characters in Sleeping Beauty all morning. And since I am still reading Chesterton, I can be grateful that she is the kind of girl who isn’t ever going to outgrow a good fairy tale. It won’t be long before she is old enough to read Orthodoxy for herself and I feel certain that she will get it when he says,
I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery and I have not found any books so sensible since.
As has been the tradition of our summer birthdays, we had a low key day. We had chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. Then we looked for and found a restaurant for a birthday lunch. It was a little sketchy, since we are pretty far from real civilization. The menu included about 10 different variations on a hamburger, and Taido would tell you, don’t stray from the burger when you’re in a burger joint. He learned this by experience after ordering the roast beef and mashed potato sandwich. It arrived at the table coated in such a thick dark plastic looking substance that was so stiff that Ben said, Look, chocolate! And it really looked like chocolate, only it wasn’t. It was scary instant mashed potatoes and scary meat substance drenched in even scarier gravy. I wish you could have seen his face. Really I think Taido’s meal was the nastiest because he made fun of me for ordering a grilled cheese sandwich, and for asking for it with whole wheat bread instead of Texas toast. (I could do another whole post on the nastiness of Texas toast…) That bread is not going to be real whole wheat! And I am sure the cheese won’t be real either. Ohhh…he was wrong about both. It was actually quite good. So if you ever find yourself in Concrete, WA, which I can’t imagine that you will, let me just say that unless you are a vegetarian, go with the burger.
We opted to go to a blueberry farm for dessert. We picked 15 pounds of blueberries, because Taido didn’t know about my limit and overpicked. And we had homemade ice cream made with fresh berries. So yummy. After our dessert, we headed back to the North Cascades Visitor Center for the millionth time. Ben and Mary Polly had finished all their junior ranger activities so they wanted to get their badges. The park ranger made a huge deal about it and she quizzed them, which kind of scared me at first, but then Ben talked her ear off and totally impressed her with his extensive hiking skills. She announced to everyone in the visitor center that there were two new rangers and she gave them certificates and badges. It was all pretty cutie. And Mary Polly was so pumped that her ranger certificate has her birthday on it.
Then we came back to camp and made trail mix that we ate on Mary Polly’s homemade zoo pals, which she spent yesterday painting for her birthday. She spent a long time on them and had her heart set on using them today, but we are having pasta for dinner, which would totally melt the watercolors, so Ben and I put together a trail mix of M&MS, chocolate chips, pretzels, cheese crackers and chex cereal. We were all so full from our ice cream and blueberries that we didn’t eat much, but we used those cutie plates.
But the real party comes Sunday when she and I head off to Victoria. All alone. Just girls. To look at flowers. And have tea.
August 15, 2008
look out your window and i’ll be gone
One night this summer we were camping at a fairly crowded campground near a beach on the Oregon Coast, and I became keenly aware of something that has been missing from my camping summer. I was walking back from the bathroom with Mary Polly and as we passed the different groups and families camping around us, a song drifted through the air and woke something up inside my heart. Mary Polly was talking and I stopped still and said,
Shhh…wait, do you hear that?
Hear what?
Shhh…just listen.
Goodbye is too good a word, babe
So I’ll just say fare thee well.
I wanted to go and find that campfire and sit down, only it might just have been a little disappointing that the voice singing was not in fact, my daddy. Plus it might have been a weensy bit awkward. But still…the guitar and Bob Dylan. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard my dad sing that song around a campfire. And a million others. Now I know as I did not then understand that it was magical that he could remember every lyric to an endless list of songs that made me never want the campfire to go out as a child. Sometimes I sang along. Lots of times I just listened. I’m not exactly sure when Daddy hung up his guitar for good, but it was a sad day. And so far no one in the close circle of people with whom I camp on a regular basis has picked up the legacy of singing to me until I reek of campfire smoke.
I stood in the street until the song finished, and then I stood there a little longer with my eyes closed picturing many of the campfires I have sat around with my dad. In Colorado. On an island in Lake Ouachita. In the Smoky Mountains. Such good memories.
I ain’t sayin’ you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s alright.
Surely the sun has not set for the last time on a day when I will hear Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen songs sung around a campfire.
you know you’ve found our campsite when you see the row of hanging “g” and bum genius diapers. years from now when i don’t change diapers anymore, i imagine i will still remember the diaper rainbow that hung on the camp clothesline this entire summer.
So we didn’t have our new camera yet when a mosquito turned Simon into a miniature boxer in Crater Lake, so we arranged for it to happen again last week at North Cascades National Park. Only believe it or not, it was worse last time.
He is drinking his soy milk from a new cup we got at Starbucks last week that says on it I went everywhere today. Surely no other two year old could possibly be more worthy to drink from this cup.
August 17, 2008
Friday morning at North Cascades National Park
August 15, 2008
I woke up early this morning to the smell of coffee. I peeked out of my sleeping bag to see if Taido was gone yet. He took off before we were awake, not to study as usual, but to answer the call of the Cascade glaciers that has grown so loud in his heart that it must have been ringing in his ears to the point of making him irritable. We have hiked all week, but we have not climbed a real mountain. To be honest, the kids are sick of hiking, and since we don’t want to risk their abandoning such a blessed pursuit altogether in rebellion against us, Taido left to make a real climb on his own this morning, unable to talk anyone into getting up early with him and making the ascent.
So I stayed in my sleeping bag and finished the book I’ve been reading in the early morning light. After over and hour of reading in the quiet camper, I closed my finished book and rolled back up into my bag, thinking about how this morning, this day will probably be the last of its kind for a very long time.
Tomorrow we head early for Seattle to set up camp and see old friends. Then Mary Polly and I have an early morning boat to Victoria to catch on Sunday. My parents arrive on Monday. Tuesday we will say goodbye to Taido and set off for home. The long way. We will have wonderful adventures. I prayed this morning that the van would make it through them all and bring us safely home. Where re-entry promises to be a little harsh. School and the central time zone are calling. Driving to football and piano. Fixing food for a crowd in my kitchen. Hot fall weather. I may not sit with a book in my camp chair again until sometime in November when we go on our annual fall camping weekend.
Of course, right now I am so looking forward to all these things. I would be lying if I didn’t say there have been many moments in the last weeks when I have dug around in the van for the calendar so I could actually physically with my finger, count the days. I am ready to be back at my table, welcoming and feasting and loving and being loved.
But today. I am going to enjoy the last slow day of our summer. Relish the opportunity to finish a book in one sitting. To ride a bike around the loop. To watch a Stellar Jay dart to and fro. To share a bowl of trail mix with my nine year old. Maybe wash and hang a few diapers. Break up a couple of fights. I have no mountains to climb today, and I am just fine with that.
August 17, 2008
girl day*
We all woke up super early this morning so that Mary Polly and I could catch the first boat out of Seattle to Victoria. I have to say that Mary Polly tutally amazed me today with her ability to be like a real traveling companion. At moments she was as grown up as me, and at others she was contagiously wide-eyed and enraptured. We enjoyed every minute of our day together doing girl things. We even loved our long boat ride there and back. We took books to read and snacks to eat. Mary Polly watched the waves and the shoreline, mesmerized by the world outside her window seat. On the way back, we bought sushi and chocolate to take on the boat for dinner and she warned me not to get full on trail mix and ruin my dinner when we were waiting to board the boat. Oh yes she did. She told me I needed to take off Taido’s ugly watch when we went to have tea, which I was wearing it so we wouldn’t miss our boat. After we had our very fancy tea at the famous Butchart Gardens, she took the map of the Gardens and navigated us through each path, deciding which garden to see next. She loved the Japanese garden best. After our garden tour, we went back downtown where she read books in Munro’s, an amazing bookstore. She stopped and watched a street artist drawing elaborate pictures on the sidewalk, and she asked me for some money for his hat. She looked at tea cups in shops with great awe. She wrote postcards on the boat ride home. She just seemed older in so many ways. It’s the first birthday I can remember one of my children actually seeming a whole year older on their actual birthday. All of sudden she has grown into this little adult person.
Being only the only two girls on our summer adventure, there have been a lot of moments when Mary Polly and I have only had each other. We have showered together, colored together, read together, fought Simon’s tantrums together…just lots of together. Her and me. Me and her. I think we will both look back on this summer as a time when we bonded in our femininity. And learned how to hang out with one another. I am hoping that will serve us well for many more birthdays and adventures together.
August 18, 2008
classic*
ME: Guess what guys! We get to pick up Grandpapa and Grandjules today and then we’re heading to Canada.
BEN and MP: YAY!!
COLE: Wait a minute. We are in Seattle, right?
ME: Yeah.
COLE: And Canada is north of here.
ME: Yep.
COLE: And Arkansas is south of here.
ME: That’s true.
COLE: Then please tell me WHY ON EARTH ARE WE GOING BACK TO CANADA?
August 19, 2008
have i mentioned that i’m not that great with transistion?*
Tuesday Morning, droopy-eyed driving to Jasper, Alberta
We dropped Taido off at the train station in Bellingham this morning at 5:30am. He will go to Vancouver and study for two more weeks while I drive to the moon and back with my parents and four children. I got really mad at him when he bought the plane ticket (sans my blessing) and so I have been determined to just get over since I’ve already thrown my fit about it. But still. Yesterday, as we were getting ready for our big shove off, I just found myself feeling like my right arm was about to be cut off. Which made me mad all over again.
Then we went to sleep last night in Bellingham (all eight of us now that we have picked up Mother and Daddy) with everything sprawled all over camp and it rained all night so I was awake in the wee hours worrying that it would take forever to get all the wet crap packed up this morning. Then we wouldn’t cross the Canadian border until close to 10am, which would mean we would be putting up a wet pop up camper at like midnight in Jasper. With no Taido. I just felt total panic about it all, one thought leading to another until I had spiraled all the way to Daddy driving us off a cliff in the dark on our way through the Canadian Rockies, all of us crashing down to a dramatic death.
So I was actually relieved when I heard Daddy outside at 4am this morning saying, Hello! I’ve been thinking about it and I think we should go ahead and pack up and get going. It was dark and rainy, but I was ready to roll as soon as I found my headlamp. Breaking a wet camp in the dark with my husband and father jerked me out of the crazy land I was creating inside my sleepy head. Thank you Jesus!
So now it is about 7:30 in the morning and we are well on our way down the road to Jasper. I think we might just make it before dark.
August 20, 2008
posted by taido
This is a blog hijacking!
Alison and the kids hit the road yesterday, leaving me all by my lonesome at the Bellingham train station. It took me pretty much the rest of the day to recover from the shock of watching my family pull away in the BMV with pop-up in tow. It was so early that it was still dark. And it was raining. Get the picture?
And now, I’m back in Vancouver for two weeks to finish up my studies at Regent. But the blow of abandonment was softened some by my Vancouver hosts, who are redefining the word ‘hospitality.’
But they – that is Alison and the kids – are currently deep in the Canadian Rockies with little hope of ever finding internet or anything else approximating civilization. Jasper, Banff, Glacier NP, Utah, Colorado Rockies, then back home. So we may or may not be hearing from Alison for a while.
That’s why I’m taking over. I really won’t have much to say. I tend to be the strong silent type. Anyway, if you are not nice, I’ll post pages from my thesis up here. And we don’t want that to happen, now do we?
One last note… I failed to mention that Alison is not alone with the four kids in the hinterlands of Canada. She’s adventurous, but not crazy. Her parents flew in Monday, and they are escorting her back to life, love, and learning on Cedar Street.
August 22, 2008
We haven’t actually seen any grizzlies (yet?) but the alliteration was just too good to pass up.
I am currently in the Canadian Rockies with my four children and my parents. Taido got a relief driver and gave us the slip so he could study without interruption for the final two weeks. So far he has missed a lot of time in the van on the road with insanely loud Chinos and several nights of setting up, camping and taking down in the rain. I know he’s really kicking himself.
On the bright side, we have seen five bears. We saw a mama bear and her two cubs climbing down from a tree. We watched them for almost half an hour. It was amazingly sweet. The kids went nuts. Even Simon was pointing excitedly.
And today, we drove the stunning Icefields Parkway from Jasper to Banff. We got enough breaks in the rain to see the glaciers and waterfalls all along the way. Mary Polly, Daddy and I even hiked the short trail up from the road to touch the toe of the Athabasca Glacier. The boys response when asked if they wanted to hike up and see a glacier, I don’t want to hike anymore. It’s too cold. Whine. Whine. My reply, Fine then. MP and I got stuck in some glacial silt. Both of her shoes came off and Daddy had to carry her back to the car. We were all covered in this gray muddy substance before it was over with. I’m not sure my poor beloved hiking boots will ever recover. Still, we touched a glacier. The path up was fascinating because it had markers where the glacier used to be according to years, showing how much it has receded since 1885 and on up to 1992. You hear about the glaciers shrinking, but it was crazy to actually see it. The markers where it used to be. It’s sad.
Actually we saw a lot of sad exhibitions today on how our lifestyle affects the earth. Lots on global warming. And then we also read a lot about the danger to the animal habitats that the throng of visitors is every year. The kids watched this sad movie about a grizzly bear whose comfort around people eventually lead to its death. And there was a book about another similar bear. I had read in my guidebook that they are trying hard to do more to protect the area’s grizzly population, and we definitely saw evidence of that today. There are trails that are closed this time of year because they are part of the grizzlies’ grazing grounds. The kids were all impacted by all the protecting animal wildlife propaganda. They are all about the plight of the bears right now. And not so much about learning the facts about glaciers, which is ahem, what I told them we were learning today.
ME: Everyone tell me three things you learned about glaciers today.
COLE: Ummmmm, I forgot already.
BEN: Glaciers are cold.
MARY POLLY: You can get your shoe stuck in the mud if you hike up to a glacier.
We are really making up for all these missed days of school, I tell you. Maybe their teachers will only ask them about bears.
August 22, 2008
banff*
So last night we got a hotel room in Lake Louise. I think it might have cost my kids their college education, but it was worth it for the recovery we made from being rain drenched for the last several days. It was amazing how much better everyone (read: my mother) was doing this morning after showers, beds and just general cleaning up of all our junk. Also the sun came out today. We went to Lake Louise first thing this morning and did a short walk, as well as a hike close to Lake Moraine to Consolation Lake. The scenery is absolutely stunning. Truly. You cannot believe it. We were all just gasping all day long. I will post pictures soon. After seeing the Lake Louise area, we headed to Banff. We set up camp in the nearby Two Jack Lake campground, which is both gorgeous and (mercifully) dry. We walked around the town, went to the Banff Park Museum where we saw all these stuffed animals that have been there since like 1885. That’s just weird to me that they can sit there for that long. And kind of gross. The kids are always tripped out by those taxidermy displays. It is funny to me, but their favorite thing from Yellowstone is STILL the stuffed dead animals. Not the REAL ones we saw driving around.
We decided to eat dinner in Banff, because we have cooked every single meal so far from the big Trader Joe’s run Mother and I did in Bellingham (that seems forever ago…soooooo many miles). I suggested some different places from my guidebook, one of which Daddy shot down because it seemed way too froo froo. So we ate at the Bison Mountain Bistro. We actually ate in the store instead of the more expensive restaurant upstairs. The stores is a specialty cheese and meat deli, but they make these ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS sandwiches with things like smoked salmon and goat cheese and all kinds of fancy-schmancy ingredients, which means that I managed to trick Daddy into one froo froo place over another, sorta kinda unintentionally…really. But it was soooo good. However, the portions were not man-sized, or Cole-sized, so when we headed back to the van, Daddy took a quick detour to a small grocery store where he purchased a half gallon of chocolate ice cream, as well as a pint of sorbet for the lactose intolerant. Then every male present proceeded to make himself (or be made, in the case of poor innocent simon) completely ill. There was moaning from all corners of the van as we drove back to the campground, where of course, there is no place to store ice cream. Later I thanked Daddy for being willing to eat at my girly place for dinner, and he said that it was alright because he was full before the night was over.
August 26, 2008
posted by taido
Sorry, I’m not a very good blog hijacker. More like a sit-in. Anyway, the Glaciers and Grizzlies post from Alison is likely the last we’ll have from her before the epic journey wraps up on Friday.
Don’t worry. Everyone is ok. Everyone that is except for the ‘loaner’ laptop. You may remember that earlier in the summer some Seattle-ite took it upon him (or herself) to un-encumber us of our brand new laptop. A generous family member sent a spare computer our way, and the posts have been coming steady ever since.
Until a couple of days ago.
One of the bears that Alison mentioned mauled the unsuspecting VAIO.
Actually, no.
It was mishandled near a glacier and it was swallowed up by a crevasse.
That’s not quite true either.
A well aimed Sigg bottle cast from the hand of an impetuous two year old brought on the ultimate ‘Shut Down.’ I’m not kidding. That is the one-hundred percent truth.
I promise.
August 27, 2008
Fell asleep in Jasper, Alberta
Aug 21
Woke up in Jasper, Alberta
Fell asleep in Lake Louise, Alberta
August 23
Woke up in Banff, Alberta
Fell asleep in Glacier National Park, Montanta
August 24
Woke up in Glacier National Park, Montana
Fell asleep in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
August 25
Woke up in Yellowstone
Fell asleep in Hoback, Wyoming
Today
Woke up in Wyoming
Going to sleep in Park City, Utah (in a house!) at a friend of my parents.
Get out a map and look. It’s insane. I’m not even going to try to describe all we have seen. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. When we crossed the border from Alberta into Montana, Daddy said, Well, we just finished our long detour on the road home, was it worth it? We all said that Yes, it was worth it. It was not without incident, but it was definitely worth it. Amazing scenery and loads of animal sightings vs. lots of hours in the van and Transition Day every day. I’d have to say that it was Lake Louise that tipped the scales in favor of the grand detour.
August 26, 2008
ticket, ticket, who’s got a ticket?
Here’s an understatement for ya…
My kids are ready to be home.
We’ve been on the road since Memorial Day weekend, and they are just done. Done. Mary Polly has been lobbying for several days now to just drive nonstop until we get there. The boys seem to be communicating their readiness to be out of the car by constant fighting and/or whining. The noise level in the van was beginning to be unbearable, and it was threatening to put Mother and Daddy over the edge. So, yesterday morning Daddy cut up a Yellowstone flyer and gave each child three “tickets.” He said he was going to take away a ticket every time someone made an ugly noise from now on and when we stop to eat, you have to have a ticket to get out and eat with us.
Here’s what qualifies as an ugly noise.
Tattling
Fighting
Whining
Asking too many questions
Hitting
So far, though many tickets have been lost, no one has had to miss a meal yet. And there seems to be less fighting. So maybe we’ll make it the rest of the way home without anyone losing an arm.
August 27, 2008
well hosted*
Driving from Park City, UT to Ouray, CO
So my parents have this friend in Park City, Utah that they did Young Life with for years. My dad worked for Young Life for the better part of my childhood, which basically means that he knows how to ski and play Frisbee golf, would always rather be at camp than at home, enjoys the company of teenagers and is qualified to be an extra on SNL. It was funny to me to hear Daddy and Jamie talk about all their old Young Life buddies, folks who are now just people living their lives but as a child were more like Greek gods from my little spot on the rug at ski camp.
Our stay at Jamie’s was lovely, even if a trifle brief. Between the deer in the yard around the deck, the Nintendo wii, a fryer that made “real French fries” and loads of hot running water, everyone present was sufficiently wowed. Park City is beautiful and as we drove away this morning, I vowed that I would be watching tickets to Salt Lake City to come back in the winter. The list of things I didn’t get to do at Jamie’s includes a yoga session on the deck with the mountains in the backdrop and skiing, of course. Is anyone else feeling a February road trip? I figure that’s about when I’ll be ready to get back in the car. And it should go without saying that I’m talking sans enfants!
Now we’re rolling again and will be asleep in Colorado before the day is over, and that is almost as good as being home. Colorado has been my second home since before I could walk. I have camped, fished, hiked, skied, whined, cried, laughed, fallen in love, had my heart broken, sung till I lost my voice, talked all night, slept under the stars and dreamed big in this glorious state. You could say I have lived there. Truly lived. So the trip home wouldn’t be complete without a stop in the Colorado Rockies. Especially since I am trying to instill the same love for this place in my children, following in the footsteps of my daddy, who has climbed every fourteen thousand foot mountain in the state. I know that God is everywhere, but His presence in the mountains is as powerful as I’ve ever experienced. So I keep going back for more.
August 28, 2008
Isn’t this how you wanted to spend your anniversary…*
in a van with four grandchildren? On your way to Sante Fe. Of course it is. Happy 38th!
Last night when we got to our campsite in Ouray, Mother and Daddy took the kids to the Hot Springs pool while Simon I stayed back at camp and made dinner. I went ahead and fed Simon because it was starting to get late and I was hoping to get him asleep before the madness returned. I got him all into his pajamas and we were lying in the pop up reading board books when I heard the unmistakable roar of the van. Dang, I thought. Well maybe he will just keep lying down and not notice that they are back. I peeked out the window, and sure enough, a big mongo van was barreling through the campground at top speed. It pulled into our slot with a vengeance. Simon didn’t even have to look. He sat up and yelled “PAPA!” So much for the early bedtime.
We are going to make a couple of stops in Sante Fe. Trader Joe’s of course, our last before we hit home, and then I’m hoping to fanagle a trip to Jackalope which is one of my favorite Sante Fe institutions. It is an indoor and outdoor market that sells, in addition to all shapes and sizes of Mexican pottery, lots of Southwest and even international artisan treasures. A significant number of the Christmas ornaments on my tree have come from this funky shop, probably because it’s usually Christmas time when I’m out here.
After Sante Fe, we are trying to make it to Amarillo, and then tomorrow we will roll on home. Home. The grand adventure is coming to a close. There are days it has felt like forever, but today it seems like we just passed through this state a little while ago. How can we already be back here? And the kids are going to school on Tuesday? Really? Well, ready or not, here we come.
August 29, 2008
hey y’all*
the most amazing thing happened last night. after we got a hotel room in amarillo (which was pretty amazing all by itself), we went out to eat. and our waiter seated us, handed us the menus and said, your waitress will be right with y’all. y’all. it was exactly at that moment that it hit me that i am back in the south. i am really getting close. really. i might just put a big ol’ pink bow in my hair order up something fried. that little twang in the host’s voice kinda made me want to hug him. which is ok because we’re probably like related.
August 28, 2009
Taido posting today…
I had another post sort of set and ready to go, but it was way too colored by the sense of incompleteness I’m feeling in being separated from Alison for two weeks. While I’m certain you would have loved insight into what has sometimes been described as a slightly inaccessible psyche, that day is not today.
However, I would like to acknowledge what a rare and wonderful gift this summer has been for me. This journey began largely because a group of saints saw fit to extend to me (and my family) a study sabbatical. Funny how those words – ‘study’ and ‘sabbatical’ – which had such a romantic ring to them at the beginning of the summer now sound like a contradiction of terms.
And yet, it was with eager expectancy that I looked forward to the opportunity to read and research and be stretched in my appreciation for the intricacy and splendor of the Scriptures. Never mind the fact that most people here spend six months to a year to write their theses. I was confident that I would have it all ‘wrapped-up’ by the time I headed home.
But with each passing week, I became more and more aware of how little I knew and how ill-prepared I was for the task at hand. So as the end of summer loomed larger and larger, I had to face the reality that despite many long hours of study, I was not going to be ‘done.’ While painfully humbling (and those who know me will see that as a welcome development), the time spent investing myself deeply in study has not been without lasting reward. With any luck, I’ll finish the thesis around the time Simon graduates from high school.
My life has been enriched both from the stretching and the humbling, but the biggest lesson has taken more time to learn. From the outset, I was eagerly looking forward to the vacation/road-trip/camp-out of a lifetime. With the beauty of the Pacific Northwest as our backdrop, the setting couldn’t have been better. Mountains and oceans. Hiking and biking. Stories and campfires. Wandering from one spectacular destination to the next. A new adventure at every turn.
An entire summer spent ‘living the dream’ and being together.
And they are, of course, one and the same. This deep need that each of us has to be with another. That truth wasn’t found in any of my books (or the countless footnotes). It was a lesson learned on the trail, in the pop-up, around the table, amongst the homeless, over coffee, through gmail, in state parks, and right here at “chino house.” And with this realization, I’ve had to un-learn that ‘the dream’ must be found somewhere else or in doing something else.
Instead, the dream will resume for me in a couple days… with my family… at home… surrounded by people who love and are loved… amidst a community of faith striving to live the much larger dream… together.
*never before posted
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Great preview and nice slide.