Cherish the wilderness

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Actually, contrary to what I would note later, I did get out into the wild that summer, just not nearly as frequently as I had hoped.

North Cascades

Summer Solstice
once again

Cornices — the snow overhangs at a mountain crest, hence the classical architectural imitation: capital, shaft, etc.

This trip turned into a pilgrimage to Snyder’s lookout experiences … Marblemount and Desolation Peak are in the mix.

 

Diablo Lake, in a Wikimedia photo. Ross Lake sits just upstream from it. Their waters really are this color, due to mineral “flour” that washes in.

The cross-state highway closed every winter …

Saw Forest Service packhorses going in at Mazama, two big trucks — up to supply the lookouts? Or pack the guys in?

Smokejumpers Camp and Airport 5

Imagine undertaking a journey where there are no road signs, no maps, no guidebooks — you don’t even know how far to the next town or inn or camp site with clean water. Much less a gas station, restaurant, or motel. You ask people and hope they know.

Now, for a spiritual journey?

23:VI:78

Vacation, at last — too exhausted to do anything (laundry in the washhouse, to free socks to pack) — almost afraid to leave the office, like a mother hen —

Still have to pack up (leave Sunday?), should I read or not? Swing around Montana, Idaho?

Sunday

After going to Thriftway, getting enough food for two weeks in the wild — things I never have at home — got cans of 7-Up, vegetables, soups, juices, puddings …

Wandered up along the Upper Columbia with tall alpine jagged escarpments dusted with snow behind and beyond the bunchgrass ridges over Wenatchee …

Hurricane Canyon Orchard …

The Yakima drops about 700 feet between the city of Yakima and the Columbia River — that’s a lot of energy siphoned into the orchards

 

The Columbia River threads past Chelan Falls and the beginnings of Chelan Lake on the left. A few orchards are nestled in along the river just below that. The large blocks are farmlands to the east of the river. Photo by Doc Searls via Wikimedia Commons.

Lady of the Lake, up Lake Chelan (original spelling was something like “Tslain”), leaves 8:30 each morning for Stehekin — barge takes cars up once a week, 8 a.m. Wednesday …

Friends Church at Quincy — half an hour earlier, I would have stopped — in blue jeans, red flannel shirt, and whiskers. [I didn’t yet know what to make with Quakers whose worship includes service by pastors.]

Vacation, reestablishing potential after being pushed against the wall. That is, freedom and cleansing. Leading, giving orders, following routine being functionary of choices already taken by others.

Somehow, the Methow Valley felt much like the trip Moon and I made up to Towanda from Williamsport, Pennsylvania, a forgotten land; here, silver mining gave out by 1890 …

Yet orchards surrounded by six-foot high deer/elk fencing, young trees staked up against the wind; even mature trees supported by lines of wire and fencing …

Twisp, Winthrop decked out as Wild West town — boom town clapboard false-fronts — me, arriving with “what-if” worries about home, such as fire … manuscripts and journals, especially …

Amazement of seeing two solo deer hopping, all four legs still, just the hooves springing all at once.

A single Douglas fir crosscut puts the felled tree at 1,335 years old. Rip ‘em out, they’re gone forever. As long as our up-teen great-great-great-etcetea-grandchildren …

Drove up over Harts Pass (6,206 BM) — nearly camped there in a patch between snow and a table buried within it, but whiteout coming in. Remembering how cold the Hoh was, the year before, along Pacific Coast,  pushed on to a site called Chancellor only to find, after a long drive bruising and cutting the tires, the road was washed out. Nearly camped in a secluded spot up there, beside a raging torrent of an icy stream, but noticed a bad cut in my left front tire and realized if it went flat there, I’d been in trouble … [this in the days before cell phones, much less any reception there] …

So back, up and over, to safer sites — of 16 Forest Service sites on the map, only two were open — the third one down was closed by a pile of rocks bulldozed up across the road …

 

Silver Star Mountain photo by Ron Clausen via Wikimedia.

Monday afternoon, Silver Fir Campground, Baker National Forest

Find a site beside the north fork of the Nooksack River, park my car, cross a footbridge to my tent and table … delightfully royal, sitting here in shorts only, listening to birds and water

[Note that I go off without her … maybe she had classes? No matter, I was free!]

Note of Coal Creek, Soup Creek, and Washboard Creek in the Cascades …

Drove up to the Baker ski area, then hiked six miles in snow up to see Baker, which was hidden behind a high ridge yet once seen, it’s a massive, overpowering, and heavily/thickly glaciated peak … Shuksan, at 9,127 feet about 1,500 feet shorter than Baker, is separated by an incredible chasm …

Hiking, God, how I hate switchbacks! Every step seems like my last (my mature poems, sez Phlum, will be sky blue and hemlock green with a touch of snow at the top).

Climbing to Welcome Pass, hoping this slope (sun-facing) will be snow-free — amazing problem for late June, “trail should be snow-free by mid-August,” booklet description of another path.

During the climb, some great views  of Mount Shuksan and its gorgeous pond way below me.

Keep hearing cascades but can’t see the chute —

At the pass, when the forest finally opens up to what should be sub-alpine terrain, I instead face a six-foot deep snow bank … where up from there, the High Divide Trail supposedly takes off — 6,000 feet elevation.

 

What I saw was something like this photo taken later in the season at Cougar Divide by Walter Siegmund via Wikimedia Commons. The three highest summits on the skyline right of center are Tomyhoi Peak (left, 7451 feet), American Border Peak (8026 feet) and Mount Larabee (right, 7868 feet). The highest peak left of center is Mount McGuire (2019 m) in British Columbia. The long ridge in the middle distance is the High Divide.

As I noted, what I beheld included an unbelievable valley below me to the north — huge glaciers on mountains I can’t identify. One mountain near here has a lookout perched atop; need my binoculars to see it.

Then stumble back down switchbacks — dodn’t see another person the whole trip.

“This is a very steep old miners trail.”

Riprap Creek flows down from Sourdough! (map reading)

28 June (Wednesday)

Realizing I’m 30, the next ten years being (traditionally) the most important in a writer’s career, and yet having the feeling I will stretch that, by shifting at 40, like Brahms from chamber music to symphonies, from poetry to novels (and perhaps a kind of Western, at that, from a much different order)

Flecks of gold in the sand (real gold: there had been a gold rush in this valley in the late 1800s

75- to 80-degree slopes … and they’re heavily forested

The droning of the river isn’t anything like the drone of a motor.

(the latter like an evil dentist dressed in black)

Nothing really matters right now, and that’s strange for me. Haven’t even heard classical music for three days now.

Coming through rainy North Cascades, this time stopping in Diabolo, Sourdough Trail (# whatever), “Sourdough Lookout 5,” thinking it’s been almost 25 years since he was up there (spotted the lookout, a tiny prick on a long monster loaf, snow still deep around it). Thinking how personal his work’s become to me — shit, I hadn’t even begun kindergarten when he was up here, how it would be another dozen years before approval as a national park or 20 before the North Cascades Highway opened (and that being closed each winter by snow) … how accessible all of this has become in the years since: yoga, Zen, too. Along with the setbacks: “14-year-old perfect master,” TM, Hare Krshna.

“a place that seems to have a more interesting past than its present”

30:VI

Home again

Air out sleeping bag, ground cloth, tent

Launder my smoky, sweaty clothes

Unpack and repack: sort through books and maps

So rare to have time to read: that sense of leisure

Yesterday, driving nearly 500 miles, a storm along the Columbia — the smell of summer rain and thunder — low clouds swirling, water gray, reminding me of the Hudson … should I have stayed on through the 4th and its mobs?

Rain in the orchard: how beautiful the back porch sounds …

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

When did I first discover that symphony?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Two Charles Ives quotes had me remembering that I borrowed the 2nd symphony from the Binghamton public library, but think it was the same Bernstein album of introduction I had perhaps taken out at my dorm’s library in Bloomington earlier or even before that from the Dayton Public Library while still in high school. It had a cool collage for a cover, which I’m unable to find online. Push Pin Studio? Oh, the days of vinyl, scratches and all!

I do remember being disappointed when the Cincinnati Symphony’s scheduled performance of the work conducted by Max Rudolf, which I could have heard on spring break, was instead replaced with a young James Levine at the helm in a different program, which a dear friend steered me away from. I still wish I had gone.

I would still love to hear it live, though that’s highly unlikely, at my age and remote location. It and its siblings should be in the repertoire of every American orchestra, the way Beethoven, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky are.

Still, I’ve had a custom of listening to the four symphonies each October, a private festival that usually spreads into the string quartets, piano sonatas, and so on. And I can even admit how much fun performing the songs in public can be.

~*~

As you can see, I admit to being a big Ives fan. He was not just a pioneering American composer but also a giant in the emerging insurance industry. If you want to know more, check out my longish Reflections at Chicken Farmer I Still Love You.

So just what if?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

It’s a fair question to ask in looking back at this period. What were the possibilities and consequences if something had turned differently? For instance, what if?

I had found a girlfriend? Someone more supportive of me and my direction than I was finding in my tenuous marriage?

Agreed to a divorce? At the time, it was out of the question on my end, at least in my strict upbringing, but she clearly wasn’t committed to us. Or, as I’m sensing, even what she saw as her calling of fine art.

Where would Kitty have turned/gone if we split? Not my problem, apart from the ways she was relying on me for financial and emotional support – something I could now argue was draining me.

We had children? It would have meant less time to write for me for certainly demanded growing maturity. Would I have resented their intrusion and limits? I was yearning for something more than sex in our connection.

Moved to Ellensburg and commuted? I would have been physically and mentally exhausted. There would have been less time for writing or anything else, actually. I saw that in an esteemed coworker.

American Olympus been published by Copper Canyon? It would have been a breakthrough possibly out of my journalism career route. But poetry, as I’ve since seen, is a precarious life route.

There had been no circle of Quakers? Trying to bridge the distances between my “worldly” endeavors in the newsroom and my spiritual support in my private life was difficult enough. Unitarians might have inspired intellectual and even social progress visions but missed the essential intuitive grounding. Zen, as I’m seeing now, had its own limits. Living in isolation in the secular world, I would have been crushed.

A local poetry circle actually existed other than the rhyme tasters? I was truly in a wilderness here, chiseling away on a number of fronts, clueless about what was actually working apart from the reactions of a few editors off on the fringe.

I had not gotten the newsroom promotions? They did give me four weeks of vacation each year, which I’m seeing as the high points of my Yakima experience. But they came at a steep price during the rest of the year and gave a false promise of professional glory off somewhere later.

Had I followed Gil to New Jersey? He would have created me a step up the career ladder, though in the end, the route crumbled under him, too. There would have been no wilderness at hand for me, though a promise of reconnecting with the ashram. On the other hand, there were major Quakers and cultural activities. As for Kitty in this leap? It would have been one more upheaval before completing her degree, though maybe not all that different from the route that ultimately opened.

~*~

Once again, in reviewing these volumes: How much my sense or memory of the timeline of these has been off and now stands corrected.

In Zen Buddhism, so I’ve been told, engaging in “what if” speculation is considered a waste of time and attention. What do you think?

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Gaining wider exposure in the news world

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

By now, our changes in the newsroom were in high gear. We had a young, aggressive, talented core of reporters, our photojournalism was outstanding, our crisp visual design included a unique style for headlines. Our circulation was even growing, not a given considering the population limits within our area.

6 sept, wed

SK popped his plan that I go to the UPI regional meeting in Portland this Saturday in his place … so Friday night, Celeste and Neville were at our place without me, and I had been unable to reach them beforehand to alert them to the change …

Seems so long since I’ve flown anywhere. [I didn’t drive? Guess it was because I was working Friday?]

Vol. 52, 9 Sept.

(“Portland — Didn’t I start another journal in this town?” Rain.)

UPI meeting, arrived last night, Jantzen Beach Red Lion Inn.

Flew in on Cascade [a puddle-jumper] through gray soup, my ears plugging as we descended. Takes four hours for my hearing to defog.

Crazy American airport hotel air again syndrome: all cities look the same, more or less.

“Hospitality suite” last night, others getting too drunk. Jacuzzi with a color TV above the water, a telephone in the toilet room within the bathroom.

What am I doing in a $35-a-night single with a bed big enough for four? Four pillows side by side across the headboard, two sinks, a bank of lights over the bathroom sink, AM-FM-alarm radio etc.

Meeting dull-eyed, weary-eyed news executives with so much “police-mentality,” crude, insensitive to other ways: “suppose he’d want an avocado sandwich.”

One young managing editor critical of UPI, whispering behind one of its workers: “Why don’t you quit and go back to the other outfit?”

But a chance to meet some sensitive journalists, too, including the Seattle and Portland bureau chiefs and some top Oregon Journal editors.

And then somebody from NYC trying to sell everybody DataSpeed, going from 1,200 to 9,600 wpm.

“Bring me a lemon with bitters on it.”

On my return:

“Hey, Steve, you want to get off UPI faster?”

“Eh?”

“Well, next year’s meeting is Washington’s and with only Chris Anderson from the [Seattle] Times and me there — Centralia had snuck out and Bremmerton, no way — they were zeroing in on me, so I nominated you. Congrats.”

Meet in Yakima? Would it push our publisher to pull the plug beforehand?

~*~

Saturday, landing in Yakima in rain, DC9 flight from Portland via Pasco, some clearing in the clouds to see Tri-Cities amid circular cornfields and later, Konnowac Pass on the Moxee side of the ridge. Kitty met me alone at the airport, no Iris or Neville (they hadn’t arrived). Kitty was delightful.

Getting home, somewhat dizzy from flying, they were there. “We have a surprise,” meaning she was expecting in April. However crazy that is.

He’s quite laid back — little talk, little motion, strange little throat laughter mostly. Records demo tapes for rock groups, mostly, in Seattle, stays away from radio spots …

Don’t think she knows what she’s getting in for (diapers, expenses like cribs, high chairs, or playpens) much less the 20-year-commitment (my biggest Q, is he ready for the long stretch?)

All this to watch ahead, though Kitty tells me my wife is more ready to be a mother than Iris is …

[So I met Neville … contrary to my later recollection.]

24 Sept Sunday

Thinking now I should have sent out the color art for farm mag and TV booklet last week, as well as ordering B&W from fair board. No wonder my horoscope has Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday looking bad (“unfavorable”)

Kent gone for the week, regional APME meetings in P’land, the publisher meddling in the newsroom, telling Wallace, “I can get a new m.e., a new city editor, a new copy desk, a whole new set of reporters if I want” — a room full of whores, including myself … what kind of living is this?

At work, everything going wrong. Hamilton on vacation, took color cover art with him. Farm stories fell through. Goz called to jury duty. Daly a daddy, today perhaps. A phone caller last week repeating, “I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”

24 Oct ‘78

Back on city desk, night shift …

Let me now confess that this matter of directing reporters on hard-news beats and seeing that they meet deadlines was never my forte, even before getting to the fact that it involved answering phone calls from readers and other strangers.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Among my personal fears

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

 Don’t we all have demons?

  1. My fear of jumping in — of doing it wrong, an unfamiliar act
  2. or of falling, physically
  3. or in debt
  4. or on my proverbial face
  5. fear of being subsumed or losing freedom, especially in relation to others
  6. or feeling shamed when I make a mistake
  7. being left holding the bag or unable to get to a plane or train in time
  8. of things breaking down or not doing what they should
  9. unable to find the right word, as in trying to describe a high-tech snafu or somebody’s name
  10. Though not so much now that I’m retired on a marginal income.

Being unlovable has somehow fallen away.

 

With something uneasy in the air

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

 That time of the morning when there are neither stars nor sun and you wonder if it’s going to be cloudy.

THE CONFLICT
You will not forget
or learn
without forgiveness

HIGH COUNTRY
we don’t have to cross those glaciers …

the sharp air of clear feathers

Majestic Mount Rainier was the iconic center of the state. Photo by Kristen Ann via Pexels.

~*~

As I noted concluding another spiralbound of journal entries: Subterranean passages open only when it’s time or seeds sprout calling for blessing.

OK?

~*~

Something’s moving. Something’s always moving.

Often, you’re unsure of quite what.

How these journals begin is important. Each volume is seldom “ended” but rather trails off, running out of space or simply, somehow, sensing it’s time to pick up anew, afresh …

 

Photo of Yakima by Steve Groom via Wikimedia Commons.

~*~

TEFLON STREET

These people aren’t connected.

Materialism? “If you’re looking for someone with a perfect body, you’re never gonna get laid.”

Sometimes, if you listen
Frogs sing.
Depending.

20:V:79

Why is it called Dog Lake?

“Look at that face!”

Vol. 51, 21:VI:78

Another tall, tan-covered volume begins. A Progress “Big Un” from Bradner Central Co., Chicago

21:V:79

Looking back through these journals, how little office data I include: no dates for promotions or pay levels, for instance. Only the exhaustion. Perhaps that’s the real office.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.