Tag: Northwest

As my world turned

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

So we were settling in.

our orchard tenant shack here
like Snyder’s place in Dharma Bums
out back of a holy family’s
out toward the birds
and simple
like the long-legged house
of Wendell Berry’s uncle
close to nature
beside the river

Noz [our black cat, half-Siamese] goes berserk when we’re not home: rolled a geode across the floor and ripping caulking from the windows …

Noted on 15:VIII:77: Kitty received notice of her in-state status today. Next up, $50 in the mail to Central.

A week later: With Celeste over Saturday night.

And then we to Seattle Sunday: dinner at Costas [my delight at souvlaki?}, then a movie house of 99 seats, lobby three times larger than the viewing room …

In the morning, my wishing Kitty would say something profound rather than weeping over a slender girl or some fine threads …

Back in our desert orchard:

Tarts baked in stars

So hot that apples sunburn

and I’d thought Ivar’ was joking

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Sometimes we went camping together

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The year 1977 presented us with several memorable treks that included camping.

In early May came this entry:  2nd day of my first real vacation in two or four years … about to set forth on the Olympic Peninsula camping trip … in that cumbersome umbrella tent, smelly but with odors that stirred much within me …

The experience evolved into my longpoem, American Olympus.

The place is a cosmos of its own, one we explored before the summer crowds flocked in.

Pacific Ocean coastline along the Olympic Peninsula. Pexels photo by Landon.

 

Photo by Mario Tutic at Pexels.

 

Rainforest by Alex Moliski at Pexels.

~*~

 Meeting campout the weekend of June 5, Meeks Table, elevation 4,200 feet …

Nathan Trueblood, 7, in his dad’s Cub Scout shirt … Indianola, Iowa …

Recorder music resounding at twilight …

Great worship atop the butte …

Prickly pear cactus on the way home

My sit focused on a feeling that people should strive for excellence, constantly making an effort to expand, grow, produce their best, but then feeling it contrary to faith, in which God gives all, that the way may unfold — like bees, birds, grasses, with ease and faith (the child). But then realized that every tree in nature survives by effort, by striving to stand (in light), that many seeds fail (may eaten or trampled), that even the biggest fall, are cut, get blight and die (silver snags, silver forests, or become nurse logs) …

~*~

And then, 26 jun 77, First-day:

Workt long hours (1 p.m. to 1 a.m. yesterday to get the Sunday paper out: breaking a new guy in for the rim)

Today, woke at noon at packed for camping, off to Adams. Kitty resistant, her tension fighting me (don’t go, don’t leave me) …

Stopped at Maryhill, place to honor a minor queen (as if a movie queen), mostly mediocre art, save Rodin studies, some glass, Russian icons, and Native collections …

Tonight, Morrison Creek camp, wondering if we have enough gasoline to get out tomorrow (on empty) … learned later this was rattlesnake infested …

Mountains white as moonlight … even in the day.

Mount Adams from a cherry orchard. Photo by Chukar Cherries orchard via Wikimedia Commons.

Glacier-clad Mount Adams dominated the western horizon of the valley, peering over 6,000-foot-ridges of the Cascades, though it was more than 50 miles away. The summit was, however, much harder to approach than Mount Rainier, some 2,000 or so feet taller.

After spending the night camping in a high-country grove in what we later learned was rattlesnake-infested, we explored the alpine edge of the mountain, where I collected two elk vertebrae.

Then we packed up the Bug and coasted down, out of the mountain, tank on empty. Silently, wildly rolling. Found a Chevron station at Trout Lake but lady afraid to fill it, tank under the front hood.

Back home, via the Horse Heavens heights and their barley expanses:

So many stars familiar constellations vanish. The awesome addition of the unexpected.

Perseid showers: fat, brilliant streaks sometimes long, others dim, thin; fast flashes or slow particular dissolves. Such variation.

Pure cold fireworks.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

As if in another life or lifetime …

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

She’s sick of herself and everything she touches. So I noted.

In early March, while we were still living in town: Sometime today, water began filling the irrigation canal along the hill and the new massive house where the sun destroyed the grass now has all of its sprinklers spraying no matter their son playing professional football.

Apparently, we were visiting the Dolphs at their new orchard.

we are all nearly homeless
hoping for anchors
within our own time

[or: attached to our lines]

CHRONIUM DOWNPOUR

~*~

On 3:IV:77, started a new journal notebook, Vol. 48, Progress 100 sheets, 12 ½ by 8 inches college ruled … tan/kraft cover …

As I recorded, “It’s all here in the solitaire deck — the origin of statistics — all those crazy rules I never quite understood in statistics class — so obvious here before me — bell curve, for starters — the addiction of hands, feel of the shuffled cards, the electric knowledge that there are still undealt cards, in the random orders, with the anticipation of the one that will do it. The sense of yet unmoved faces that could make this hand go down, yes this one, will do the trick. And all those maybes — balance, in numbers and colors, highs and lows, latent moves — aces, kings, and deuces … it’s all there …”

[So I was getting hooked to the game long before I’ve thought]

Palm Sunday, partial lunar eclipse of the full moon. [Are lunar eclipses always full moon?]

Getting her back into the Sunday bed, long, languorous love-making, continuing past climax, slow and warm, in many positions through the morning …

That afternoon, at Gils’ once again sensing the futility of trying to find “the good life” in alcohol and horses, Whiz so loud, Wisteria’s conversation so much about things, my trying to extricate from books and type into my whole-self … back home going for a wind-fighting bicycle ride, my leg muscles taut …

Whiz trying so hard to make everything loving, caring, brimming with feeling — somehow reflecting a fear of his own empty hunger …

Hmm, like that phrase “empty hunger” … in contrast to the stone?

Gil had a cat named Mousetrap …

~*~

On her birthday, the first of her rejecting me because of her painful vaginal/uterus itching …

Do I blame pantyhose?

~*~

Saturday before Easter …

Earlier notations of impending drought now come to the fore …

White apple blossoms already open, earliest ever; prior record was 20th of the month. Now the fearful frost watch …

Everywhere, irrigation sprinklers squirting, using the water while they can …

~*~

Realized how much Whiz and Wisteria ape us … for instance, buying a chess board when neither of them plays. In two weeks they’ll act as though they know the Olympics once we’ve said we’re here …

~*~

Nothing much grew there without irrigation. Here’s one major canal diverting water to orchards from the small Yakima River, essentially snowmelt from the southern Cascades Range mountains. Water rights are a legal issue largely unknown in the eastern half of the U.S. My political science guru Vincent Ostrom was an authority on the matter. Finally, it was registering on me.

~*~

Early June:

Back from Tinowit powwow

dancers in angel wings
and Allan Ginsberg’s 50 already

The thinners — man and three women — floppy sun hats, loose dresses waving in the breeze — coming down from the ladders for dinner, chattering in Spanish, their movement like a dance

Also had just read Ecotopia the first time …

Late brunch today at Frasu’s at the airport (I didn’t get out of bed till one) — champagne part of the deal. Stopping to see Wisteria, Abell’s grown, rolls sideways, barks at dogs, cows, birds, and cats, and plays with balls. Laughs at subtle surprises, like when it’s caught or bounces on his head or disappears. A pleasant Sunday afternoon.

Learned how Hamilton lost his watch — gambling with a subject. Then tried to buy a new one at Penney’s, “Like to look at a Seiko under $35,” but the clerk just walked away. Next day he returned but the clerk wouldn’t accept his check. Called the manager, who demanded three pieces of identification before approving the check. At which point, Jeff took the watch off his wrist, said “Wait a minute, I’ve changed my mind. I’ve been treated rudely,” and then took his check back and ripped it up. The clerk looked wounded, as if “not me.”

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

As our circle connected and stretched

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In the morning, beside the fire, Kitty said if we were still in Indiana, we’d be at Meeting right now, which spurred thoughts of friends and places. Then Carol Grow phoned, to say the Dolphs had friends/guests coming from Oregon and we’d meet at 8 — no potluck, just what turned out to be good, deep energy.”

Was this Smitty Young Bear?

Ivar noting “something strange” in the Valley, the lack in most of it of older, well-maintained structures — instead, the use of trailers, storefronts, a “boom town” attitude … we were also into a deep drought.

The Scotts, of Ellensburg, home from sabbatical … they’re highly regarded and outgoing … but their son is dying, something that returns them to Friends after backing off for years — burned too often, too much standing up for conscience, let somebody else do it …

In short, the Quaker gathering was becoming the center of our social world.

 As I noted 6:III:

Meeting growing closer, deeper, with strong, invisible bonds … a beautiful, loving communion … speaking initiated by Louie’s strange, deep, loving, and troubling speaking … our next meeting will be at their place … where I would pick up what I thought was a curious white, striated and very heavy rock from their mantelpiece only to be told it was a mastodon tooth …

On 17 apr:

Meeting in E’burg, in the morning, at Joe and Myrtle Wilkening’s … they can’t come Sunday nights but mornings or Saturdays are good … also got the address for another place to meet here, through them …

Later, we stopped at the Dolphs’ on our way back from a salmon bake in Toppenish we couldn’t find. Cut asparagus along the canal banks. Learned their little tenant shack is up for rent. Now, trying to find the courage to move in there … smaller but much, much cheaper …

At home, finding an ad in Crossroads, another couple sitting for Meeting … called them and learned of two other couples. So our Quaker circle here, in a single day, has grown by half again, if we arrange ourselves …

~*~

Ten days later, we were half-moved into the little house … and trying to cut back to fit into it …

So the move took place at the end of April? I would have placed it a month a letter, from memory.

The move put us much closer to the earth and agriculture that were so essential to the existence of the county. It would also spur much of the action in my novel, Nearly Canaan. It brought me closer to the culture and ecology of our environment.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Seeking to capture the local land and culture in my own writing

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As for poetry? “Wonder if my work adds up to summa, if it has a point” …

The night before (so where were we?): “the aging aesthete dismissing Pfingston’s piece, ‘This isn’t a poem,’ as though he knew, this uptight, pretentious high-school teacher whose 30 friends kept clinging to him, whispering comments about ‘classical forms’ and the ‘need for discipline’ and keeping a guard against ‘imitators’ and how Joan Stone can’t STAND Duane Niatum, ‘He borrows everything.’”

“That’s what happens when you get a PhD,” I almost said.

How many tall tumblers did that guy down — a dozen? How can any drunk evaluate a poem, appreciated its silence?

I’m tired of veneer, tired of poetry tasters — everything but the purely original, primitive, religious incantation …

[I had not yet delved into Jackson Cope’s “incantatory language” perspective on early Friends …]

When a batch of submissions go out, the first back are quick rejection slips — usually overstocked — then the mixed bag of acceptances and misses — and finally the slow anguish of almost-takens and those returned unread …

It’s almost a pattern

~*~

Wollah Wollah = whistling water = Walla Walla

~*~

When Coyote desired Beaver’s beautiful daughter, Rain sent his own beautiful daughter to plead with Coyote, who instead tried to rape her and make her his other wife. And thus, enraged, Rain punished the east — Coyote’s land — by raising the Cascades mountains so that Coyote and Wind could not steal all the clouds.

I’m left wondering about Beaver and his child.

~*~

Meanwhile, these local poets and artists who don’t study, don’t know what’s been done before, wouldn’t recognize ancient excellence, don’t know what’s being done now, don’t experience the nature out there or the scary, untapped energy fields within themselves … who don’t try to make each piece unique but merely a repetition of their static non-discovery closed-in closed-off non-lives …

[How’s that for non-judgmental?]

~*~

Hops, which are used to favor and stabilize beer in its brewing, were another famed agricultural product from Yakima. The vines would climb the ropes to the top, with the whole vines being cut down at harvest. Note Mount Adams in the background. (Photo by William Borg via Wikimedia Commons.)

~*~

 I used to write poems about the weather. But what can you say about a place where the weather’s always good? Only that the wind’s blowing?

[Think of a comment I recently heard, about a poetry editor who scorned Weather Report pieces. Gave them an instantaneous rejection.]

~*~

Watching clouds 50 miles away.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Along with a sunny apple ranch

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

While my novels Nearly Canaan and Secret Side of Jaya contain many details from my Yakima Valley years, the experience also prompted a proliferation of poetry.

Works available as free PDF downloads at my Thistle Finch editions site include the poetry broadsides Whistling Jack (a common name for a high-country marmot) and Just Like That (regarding elk) as well as the poetry chapbooks Grilled Salmon, Sagebrush Diamond Hitch, Turquoise & Silver, and Universal Range.

The orchards, mountains, forests, rivers, and Pacific currents all astonished my Midwestern sensibilities.

Welcome to another Rabbit Hole on the Internet.

Beyond the canyon, mostly

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When it came to the great outdoors for us, the year 1977 early on presented us with a trip that settled in E’burg rather than a few more hours on to Seattle. We found refuge in the Outrageous Taco, a freak center in an old beer hall turned pizza/taco/deli quiet with live music and free poetry journals to circulate … a sense of pleasant decay (a $2 movie nearby) … incense in the air, too. We would return frequently … a good selection of new and used books, too.

Homeward by the Canyon Road, walked over the swinging bridge at Umtanum Creek, Kitty screaming, scared, delighted, a future point for a hike …

~*~

The Yakima River Canyon stretches 27 miles through three major ridges between Yakima and Ellensburg, with summits that rise more than 2,000 feet in places. A railroad and two-lane highway cling to the base beside the river.

In late February, we made our Umtanum ascent, including the bald eagle observation, the first in the valley in 25 years. It was the middle ridge, as I recall, and forms a pivotal chapter in my novel Nearly Canaan.

Thinking of my nature poems … man, the legions of demigods, takes something away, reduces the richness of the land … Nancy Trueblood’s “in the mountains I feel closer to God” … limits the diversity of the species, the expansive quiet, the wonderful circling weaves … in Indiana, my nature poems were often at the edge of the woods — the interface of man, land, and seasons … historical depth where farms sometimes expressed a harmony … a deep cold springhouse, a summer porch … the mountains here, ever green or, like our desert ridge, light brown, are something else … and man adds nothing …

~*~

10 July, Sunday

Drove along Sauk Creek to Stevens Pass … [north of Ellensburg]

Gold-mining remains … introduction to Leavenworth and then the North Cascades …

Leavenworth, with its Swiss Alps festive mood … shame that something similar cannot be created/sustained in “American” or Native authentic theme … maybe something to do with America’s lack of holy rivers and mountains or maybe our flat “Christian” approach to life … (Swiss Calvin not withstanding)

~*~

18 July … apricots gone

~*~

31 July/First-day evening

No entries in a week —

Last Sunday, left early for Seattle (after a midnight Saturday shift) to meet Bill and Mig Dietz and Curtis and Jacquie. The whole port city bit: winos, sailors, loggers, porno shops (me, buying newspapers!), Blacks and students, crowded Sunday parks, jazz. Got to know Curtis better, though their planned North Cascades backpacking got jettisoned by Jacquie’s emergency retinal surgery. His gentleness and humor, plus his Seattle friend Bob Green. Our disappointment with the Seattle art museum, then learning it was cut in half, with anything modern at City Center. The aging freaks and the strangest cats.

Met the Dietzes for dinner at Ivar’s, pier 54. How beautiful these people are. Bill’s ability to melt Kitty’s sharp questioning from Jacquie …

Had salmon, scallops. [Not crab?] The Yakima, a sleek new ferry, in the next pier. Seagulls and seafoam.

Heard of one Friend’s decision to go to Australia, though she didn’t have enough cash to get a visa. Hitched to SF, her first ride was with a trucker who CB’d ahead, starting a chain that got her safely, quickly down the pike — always the next ride waiting. Got to the SF consulate office, sat outside till she got a “hardship” visa. Got her case heard. And went on her way, after staying at Friends House.

The uncommonly filling spirit at our parting. So high, elated from this visit, happy to be together, laughing aloud on our long drive home with a new moon.

~*~

Mount Rainier, photo by William B. Jacobs via Pexels.

Fremont lookout

Rainier National Park

7,200 feet sea level

Kitty joined me in the ascent from Sunrise; thought she’d stop at Frozen Lake but seeing children’s tracks felt shamed into continuing. Amazing Alpine natural gardens …

Clearest day one could hope for: Adams, Goat Rocks sharp view from the trailhead, yet a violet haze layer over Puget Sound from Olympia to Mount Vernon.

Next page a sketched panorama map showing Mount Baker, Glacier peak, and the Stuarts … plus notation, “Olympics a blue ragged line riding above the haze.”

Sitting up here’s just like riding a cloud.

And thus we are cloud-riders being ambushed by ’monks,

the fearless chipmunks attempting to ride our lunch …

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

As for our home life?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Our first winter Out West was accompanied by domestic tensions. As I noted:

Sucking, swirling blaze
fire in here, snow on the roof
faintly false smell of burning tea

candy on the table
bulbs in the box
tears on my wife’s cheeks

Also:

inner silence in contrast to the newsmen made of gossip,

bitching, down the drain to sorrow

Kitty’s down: “I don’t belong anywhere!”

Also unhappy with my Chinook “paraphrases” (her term): “write your own stuff.”

When I go back over the Chinook pieces, add my own smart-aleck comments: the evil thing at the door “must be the cops” or Indian agents … BIA … or go free-wheelin’ into myths and texts … go back over the economy thing I’ve been trying to develop, “we’ll all be tent makers.”

Beer as cheap as Pepsi.

 RITUALS, especially on a day free of the office:

  • Rising early, when silence is strong. Or, more lazily, sleeping in, hopefully late.
  • Making coffee, to sip all day using a special mug
  • Reading sacred texts. Followed with the morning paper
  • Cooking. Breakfast. A dinner wine. Candles.
  • Shower.
  • Planting, Weeding. Harvesting. Canning in old glass jars.
  • Washing dishes, cleaning tools.
  • Watering the houseplants.
  • Cleaning the toilet.
  • Returning to a favorite book.
  • Split and stack firewood. Or bring it indoors.
  • Making love, especially when the moon is full.
  • Letting the cat in. And out.

At odds with self: static, knot in lower back.

How dead this living room is without a wood fire.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

I’m delighted to know Indigenous petroglyphs are found here

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Previous posts this year have presented my curiosity in petroglyphs and petrographs even before I relocated to the Pacific Northwest and saw them in the wild. That time in my life was accompanied by a growing appreciation of tribal mythologies, which I believe enhances an understanding of the region’s unique biosphere. Living at the edge of the Yakama reservation meant the ancient stories I was reading were local news.

The Indigenous spirit was something I missed in my dwelling-places since in my moves eastward across the Midwest, Baltimore, and then New Hampshire.

Eastport, however, with its Passamaquoddy legacy and presence, has revived that. The tribe somehow survived oppression and is rediscovering and reclaiming much of its culture, thanks to the pioneering efforts of individuals like the late Wayne A. Newell, who wrote more than 40 books in the supposedly dying Passamaquoddy language before his first book in English in 2021, Kuhkomossonuk Akonutomuwinokot, Stories Our Grandmothers Told Us.

The late Fredda Paul was doing something similar within herbal medicine and healing lore, while also continuing the storytelling tradition. They are both deeply missed.

Tribal historian Donald Soctomah has furthered their work. These days, he’s part of a circle documenting and preserving the local petroglyphs in the face of rising sea levels. His online presentation earlier this year with the Border Historical Society in Eastport had me realizing I may have been overlooking impressions here – many are stippled into the rock surface in a way that they’re visible only early in the morning or late afternoon, especially if the stone is wetted. A video, A Song of the Drum, and several short YouTube videos from Machiasport can be found for free online.

This petroglyph depicts a woman giving birth. It was chipped into rock using smaller stones, a style different than the long incisions made by sharper instruments.

Another wonderful video, Rhythm of the Heart, on the life of birch-bark canoe maker David Moses Bridges, is also available for free online. It’s a moving testimony. He passed way too early.

 

With premonitions as visions in the night

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Vol. 47, starting 29 November 76, was the third tall, tan Citadel … had many poetry drafts and other bits that were eventually published. Now, for a few things that weren’t …

First, an erotic dream a few nights earlier, resigned myself to a wedding feast, mine to a wealthy, rural, landed girl — Quaker family — and, oh, how happy the whole circle was, as if trying to wake me from a heavy sorrow … she had long hair. This dream would haunt me later.

I woke myself, insisting, “But I’m already happily married!”

The farmhouse, set in a grove of solid trees, was a three-story federal style I would encounter six to eight years later in Maryland or Delaware and then, later, in New England.

Also, an erotic dream of Celeste followed the next day, in fact, with a tender letter from her in the mail …

“Got Yule cards out Thurs, only marginals remain.” Guess that means the ones that needed more personal notations.

~*~

Mount Adams, the distant presence to our west, continued to fascinate, perhaps as an emotional anchor for me.

Mount Adams by David Lepore at Pexels.

~*~

In revisiting my journals from this stretch of my life, I’m struck by ways my memories diverged from the timeline recorded in the pages.

I would have insisted, for instance, that the wedding dream took place about two years after leaving Yakima.

On the other hand, the Quaker circle gathered earlier than I sensed.

The office situation was more tangled than I remembered, too.

I’m also more conscious of not having close local connections or friendships in Fostoria, apart from Kitty and her family, and wonder how a local church might have altered that, had I not been such a yogi. Jump ahead, and it becomes apparent that my Yakima contacts, apart from the office, were mostly among transplants, especially our new Quaker circle.

I do wonder, too, if it weren’t Friends, how might I have connected. Unitarian?

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.