Note my realization, in revisiting these journals, of how important my vacations were … the principal advantage in “being management” was in having four weeks free … and that month away was when I grew, experienced, discovered, replenished … Just getting outdoors, rather than the office, was important to me.
Still, here’s a sequence of my outdoor exposure in 1979.
8:V
We hardly noticed when the ticking irrigation spraying of the orchard began. It all seems so natural to us by now in this desert.
The familiar sound of summer: watering the orchard.
Descending from Rattlesnake Ridge, intercepted by an old man in a white Jeep. Dressed Sunday neat. German maybe Polish accent: “This is private land. The sprays are very dangerous. The public land is over there,” further from my place or this perimeter road. Yes, those sprays are poisonous. They spray our house, we lost a cat. And then we sell our apples.
Trip back from Quarterly Meeting via Stevens Pass, snowpack and clouds making the mountains seem taller, more breath-taking …
Through Stevens Pass, watching for small tunnels in the slopes — mine shafts I’d never noticed before. Once I’d see one, there would be three — a hardhat exiting from one! a dozen more hiding in the forest. Whispering, luring: GOLD!
~*~
Many mountain outings.
The Jorg project, a poetry publishing opportunity.
Employment pressures.
The “twin bridges” at Selah have multiplied: the Interstate highway made them four, plus the four railroad spans — an octet of spans over trout waters
How many times have I meant to “record” the twin bridges observation? But this is the first time I’ve followed through.
~*~
Zenny over Saturday night. The two of us prepping to go hiking Sunday on Darland Mountain, “High Road 6,972 feet,” second highest in the state. [I had driven to the summit on one of my first outings here, perhaps the first.
Clouds up, all around. Frost-killed ground cover.
~*~
The view from Darland included Goat Rocks close-up. Snowy Mountain, the highest peak in the remote attraction, rises 7,880 above sea level. You get none of the breathtaking sensation from this U.S. Forest Service photo, but that’s not uncommon when it comes to mountains; the camera typically flattens vertical majesty.
~*~
29:V:79
Our Meeting campout was relaxing, delightful, despite motorcyclists and horses. Lynn’s friend [and future husband and all-too-soon widower, his second time] was beautiful, tender though with his big beard and big build could suggest a “bruiser.” Skip, admittedly, “Could have gone to Berkeley to teach, but it probably would have destroyed me.”
McLain Lake was down 12 feet from last year — surface a third to a quarter of what it was then. Why wasn’t it salty?
Was its seepage feeding springs down in the canyon somewhere?
Tadpoles swam in serpentine schools.
“Lynn said if I was very lucky, I’d get to come to her favorite spot.”
“Well, Skip, you’re very lucky.”
At twilight, as some of us sat by the campfire, others were off as a recorder quartet sounding around the lake. Skip, playing baritone or bass, “Find us something easy.”
For me, this was like sitting beside a beaver pond listening as frogs regained their boldness and joined the Baroque-era tunes and finally overwhelmed it as three geese took flight.
Yet how do I see “that of Christ” in the trail-bikers intent upon racing anywhere?
[Meeting attender] Roger Solomon lost three-quarters of his cherries to frost when the wind machine failed.
Worship atop Meeks Table after a stiff climb up the scree, adding to anticipation.
Elk and deer tracks everywhere, the bitterroot out, too, befitting our custom.
Within the shared solitude, itself a fruit of our effort of getting there, a flash from Bly’s Kabir notes came to my mind, where he retranslated Bible: “Our Father, who art in spirit,” and in this instant of nature-worship, the “God so loved the world” to delight in every flower and ant seems right, far more than a Heaven off in some future.
As we sat in our informal circle, occasionally gazing out over clouds rolling in over snow-peaked mountains and the chasm betwixt that and us, I thought of two kinds of Americans: those who see wilderness as something to conquer, flatten, overrun, destroy — speed through — mine, log it (Rock! And roll!). Versus those who would enter its harmony and keep it forever. Even more than our classics. We came and come for the latter.
The coming Oil Shortage may switch the battle back to our advantage. If their dozers and tanks run out of fuel.
~*~
Driving up I had been surprised by all the prickly pear in bloom, ten times what I had seen yet.
My love is like a prickly pear, beautiful when she blossoms, deadly as a rattlesnake if you lose your balance, be careful not to cross her!
22:XII:79
First-day, first day of winter …
TURN, TURN TOWARD THE LIGHT
a beautiful day, climb Rattlesnake Ridge
the immenseness of the Valley
(where did that plate glass by the Jeep trail come from?)
Christ, on the peak, being tempted to accept the city below
(city = civilization = wealth, power, comfort)
me, would I turn toward the empty hills? Their inhospitable, uncomforting, austere, rocky and tufted ridges ever beyond — away, away — or toward, toward what?
Georgia O’Keeffe, seeing the symbol of desert as bone, was so right — life here is presented as leavings rather than fleshy — brown stalks, blanched scats, snake skins and their bones, trackings. Yet jackrabbit, pheasant, rattlesnake, and coyote know the ways hawk flies, along with holes in the earth for nests and dens.
The Waiting Scriptures
~*~
From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.
