Summer almost gone, haven’t really been to the mountains this year — is it Kitty (together only on the weekends, and thus me reluctant to take off without her?) or the fact I’m working so long and hard I just want to collapse on my time off, making hiking/camping/travel too much (circuit overload) or that my days off now coincide with everyone else’s meaning the mountains are crowded? I wish I knew for sure. Or even so much rain in the mountains on weekends, each one at least cloudy?
But this has been a good summer of reading, novels, mostly.
~*~
Somehow, every time I suggested we head off into the mountains, her answer was, “What for?” meaning no interest on her part. It always put me in a bind.
As she said on Tuesday: “Hope today was better than yesterday.”
“Jesus, did it!”
“Well, cheer up. I just checked your horoscope and Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday will be as bad as Monday.”
And were they!
While the Canyon Highway was slightly shorter, the alternative route between Yakima and Ellensburg (and on to Seattle), Interstate 82, took a higher elevation course to the east but was faster though less dramatic as it ran through largely sagebrush barrens. Still, returning to the valley on either end felt like landing in the cockpit of an airplane, especially after dark when layer after layer of dazzling arrays of civilization lights unfolded. Sorry I haven’t found images of that, though I’m sure nothing could match what I remember.
~*~
Pixaby image. The ground along the interstate was seldom this green (the photo was likely taken at the prime of spring). The green in the Kittitas Valley below was irrigated hayfields and orchards, mostly. Forests on the ridge in the distance grew far enough up the slope to be sustained by lingering snow and wet clouds.
Kitty called me at work to tell me she had found a new apartment for the upcoming semester.
“Expensive,” said she.
“How expensive?”
“$110 a month, with utilities. But at least I won’t be embarrassed to have you over.” Adding, “Since you like my friends, you may want to spend some weekends up here.”
And, for once, we talked about Mark. [Or was it Michael?]
“Well, maybe the new place will help you keep out of trouble.”
“That’s over, anyway. Don’t worry.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I don’t want to get a situation that brings me down, and he only brought me down.”
“You realize this is the most we’ve ever talked about that?”
“I know, Jnana. I love you.”
“I love you, too. That’s about the first time in eight months I’ve told you that.”
“I know, but I mean it. I sure enjoyed your visit Sunday.”
“Me, too.”
7:IX
Jupiter entered Leo on Wednesday, “personal relationships will be much improved.” Also, “You will meet very interesting new people and find success working with a partner.” Also, tomorrow, “Venus enters Scorpio, where it will remain the rest of the year. This is your Business House and indicates that your relationship with business associates will go smoothly. You may receive favors from influential people.”
But Saturday? “You may spend the day with a group or organization, but do not get along with the group’s leader. You resent people’s telling you what to do.” Huh, the UPI meeting?
And Sunday, when our Friends circle resumes: “Mercury enters Virgo, your eighth house. Your mind is once again focused on hidden or spiritual matters. You are eager to explore occult ideas.”
~*~
Journaling 11 September, [Monday] Port Townsend again, first day out on vacation. Half-moon.
[Note that the UPI trip took a day out of my vacation] …
~*~
15 Sept / Friday (wait, a full Friday off?)
What a lazy, wasted day!
Tonight, watch the Ali-Spinks rematch. [Was it with anybody else?]
Apples picked and gone once again / circles, circles with a bullseye wide as the universe
~*~
1 Oct / First-day, after Mtg
in the morning like, Adams and Rainier as corral pink as the conch shell vulva
my only tranquil moment within a long day
mushroom growing in our shower stall
11:XI
Hit with my annual flu-symptoms
2:XII
Kitty wondering why people don’t like her.
Call at the office from a friend from high school Her husband has taken a pastorate in Grandview, moving up from California.
Our landlords’ younger son and I hiked to Camp Muir, a 5,000-foot or so ascent in 4½ miles, then back again. Nearly all on snowfield with rock-pile islands within it. Amazed by so much alpine flowering within it. On one island, clear streams gurgling through moss and blossoms.
As I noted, 23:VII:78, Sunday [I’m assuming the climb was on a Saturday, now that I had those off]:
A stiff, hard climb. We both stopped many times to rest / catch our breath, then discovered that by moving slowly, in “rest step,” we made better time, even with still needing rests … we were passed by skiers who climb to the camp and then ski down, and by climbers with full packs. [how humbling!]
But we made it! Left the ranch at 3 a.m., stopped for breakfast and gasoline, catching the first pink rays on Rainier as we came through White Pass and then the first rays on Adams in Stevens Pass …
At the higher altitude, the sky becomes the clearest, deepest blue, almost the color of this pen but clear, like a dense copper-sulfate solution. (Ward would also mention this about his Rainier climb.)
Muir, “cloud camp,” is nearly Tibetan — two rock shelters in a barren, snowy saddle, plus a few other shelters for shitting, mountaineering supplies, and a ranger. Five ravens fly in, like hawks or vultures on battered wings …
Approaching Camp Muir from the Muir snow field, after Anvil Rock. Photo by David Geeraerts.
How lucky we were to have a clear day. Only the highest clouds, nothing on the mountain itself. Adams, Goat Rocks, St. Helens all clear, even distant Hood. Above Seattle, though, the purple-exhaust soup rising perhaps to 8,000 feet. Fantastic views, too, of Nisqually Glacier, with its pale blue electrical ice …
I was surprised by the number of people we saw above timberline — 300, perhaps. Party after party, black dots working toward the crest or returning.
By late afternoon, the atmosphere thickened; we lost sight of Hood in the haze.
~*~
I loved using the ice axe I borrowed for this outing, felt it gave me so much control as we carved our steps upward in the slick cold. I even felt armed and protected. The ax proved especially helpful on our descent. We wrapped our ponchos around our butts and slid down the slopes, using our ax as a rudder and brake. Glissade, as it’s called, bouncing and spraying up snow as we go. Still, we got wet.
Despite sunburn precautions — zinc oxide over our face, gloves to protect our hands, wide-brim hats (“Say, Cowboy,” I address Anders), we were both burned on our faces by the strong reflection off the ice and snow, as well as the thinner air not breaking the rays …
And then, as we approached the Paradise lodge, the mobs of tourists plus rangers directing traffic, like a Central Park in Manhattan.
The tourists looked at us as if we were Bigfoot or space aliens. Zinc oxide? “I’ve been drinking the clouds.”
Later, I was surprised by how many skilled climbers go in shorts only, achieving the deepest of tans.
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 …
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?
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.
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.
In reviewing these journals, I’ve been surprised how much earlier spring came there than it does in northern New England where I’ve lived the last four decades.
4:VI:78
While the rest of Friends were off camping, Kitty and I spent Saturday at home: sunbathing nude in our yard. Then Sunday, off to join them at McDaniel Lake / Meeks Table.
Ward raised the question of where our Meeting’s going and why it seems lacking … and became clerk, with a desire expressed for weekly worship … and discussion …
So that we may all grow together, share together, focus together, learn together \ Sangha de Sacre Sangre.
Ward admitting that in trying to live life fully, deeply, he has so much trouble in knowing and expressing his deepest self clearly …
Ivar hoping the men of the Meeting can get together once a month or so for a meal or whatever to share ourselves as men and get to know each other far better (the women, said he, seem able to do this where men usually don’t) … perhaps a work party, rotating among households?
Going up to the Table, Nancy asked about my beads, opening up a whole ashram rap … [was I still wearing these to the office, under my tie?]
Near Horseshoe Bend (something becoming 1/3 of the horseshoe it was before the highway department cut it short), there clumps of blooming prickly pears were blossoming — incredibly beautiful — thin, waxy, pale yellow large petals enclosing large red stamins having yellow tips = amid flat-leaf oblong cacti with long spikes “deadly as a rattlesnake” — the buds are pink, for some reason. [It remains one of my favorite flowers.]
After a year of drought — driest year on record — rains came and the desert bloomed brighter, deeper than anyone could remember …
~*~
Sunday night, Quaker Meeting at the Grows’. Ward wondering if he can take on clerk responsibilities now that he’s been named chief-of-staff at the hospital. Today Kitty sez she thinks I’ll wind up as clerk this year. [Which is what happened. The only technicality was that I’d have to be a formal member of the Society of Friends, a step I hadn’t yet taken.]
In the latest 4th New Age Directory, I found nothing listed for Stroudsburg PA — is the Poconos Ashram experiment over? Old New Age people get thrown out or for a loop? Or has the ashram closed to outsiders (as per plan)? Now is not my time to break the silence with Swami. Or had I been ostracized?
Trying to write a Crossroads piece on Quarterly Meeting realizing how many simple words have taken on complex meanings only Friends can understand, including the overtones of “Meeting” or “Friend”
That session of QM was then held at Clear Lake, on our side of the Cascade Crest … first time ever that far east.
When the decision was made with trepidation to hold the QM session outside of the Puget Sound area, they feared low turnout — instead, had the largest attendance yet: 150 in a camp with 92 beds …
Kitty remarking later how many people she met shined.
~*~
Rippled by reaction to movement toward preparative meeting status. We’re been crying out for help but only to ourselves. We’ll see if I become clerk, as Ward has proposed. (Kitty wishes someone would simply take charge and do it.)
The QM gathering gave me faces for names I had heard.
~*~
Sunday, I was approved as clerk … still as junior swami, right?
~*~
Zenny, visiting over the weekend with a cider press: “salvation” akin to Zen “kensho,” a rebirth of spirit or awakening.
Next QM at Fort Warden: should I arrange a reading that Saturday night in Port Townsend?
The state ferries on Puget Sound were a highlight of many of our trips to the “wet side” of the Cascades, especially when we were going beyond Seattle. I’ve long considered such ferry rides as a “poor man’s cruise.” Here’s one with the Olympic Peninsula’s Mount Pershing, Jefferson Peak, Mount Cruiser, Mount Skokomish and Mount Stone in a photo by Tiffany Von Arnim. Often, though, clouds, rain, and fog obscured their appearance. Port Townsend was a repeated destination.
~*~
How hard it is to dwell in my own heart, keep peace, radiate from there. How hard to “know my own landscape,” my own resources, to “live at home” and not “go to town for stimulation.”
Or is it simply that I’m trying to cover too much ground?
~*~
Mtg, First-day, seems we’re getting a “2nd group” in contrast to the original “evening group” — morning core of Truebloods, Jean, Barbara Rankin, Becky, Cathy, Eric, and me. Perhaps now our “Brothren” Friends Emily and Roger, too.
We were on a schedule that alternated Sunday morning worship at the YWCA, same time and place as the Unitarians on one week with Sunday evening gatherings in homes the next. The morning’s were downtown, easily accessible for newcomers. The evenings included potluck dinners and a more social setting that also gave us the earlier part of the day to explore the outdoors, as we were inclined to do. Or, if needed, to sleep in late.
In E’burg, met a poet — Richard Danner — who couldn’t put his wife in a poem until they split, after 12 years of marriage, allowing him to write a book, Single Space. And how jealous they became of the other’s writings.
There’s a dilemma of consider her as an objective subject to be, um, exploited.
Maybe some things deserve to remain private.
Pflum said the words he likes to use are the conditionals: if, then, because, ad infinitum: the words of logic, of possibility, of thought itself …
Yet they often dilute the action. Somehow, they work for him, though.
Kentucky Fried Movie opens with the line, “The popcorn you are eating has been pissed in,” and deteriorates from there.
I have so many overdue books from the library yet don’t want to return them just now.
The Ellensburg library has a whole set of early Cetra opera LPs. Unlike Yakima’s.
20 Apr
Finished the longpoem.
Kitty phoned, depressed, wouldn’t say why.
Why do I put up with it?
Off to the office. [Was I journaling early a.m., after meditation etc.?]
Flow of revisions, largely the Leonard Springs pieces …
Cherries deep red, about to be picked …
Perfection versus sterility
The bounty of the prairie: abide in it
Milton! Getting down to him at last … his head and heart going in opposite directions … damn theology but his heart betraying that in the few moments it can. He was blind to more than vision.
Ideas for revising Native tales: use Bob White or even Rbt. White for quail. Logger, Cutter, even Sawyer for beaver. Cops, FBI, CIA, spooks for monsters or evil spirits. Lawyers for lazy characters or blue jays. Jesus for coyote. Update and urbanize, satirize modern society. Consider quaint spellings for Wyatt, Philip, Sidney, William, Dunbar, etc.
Weave in some glare and grime.
In English poetry, the weight of Christian doctrine closing the range of thought and sensibility to a single, predictable line. Thus, the wonder of Blake’s singular accomplishments.
20:VI
A letter from Copper Canyon Press, wanting to publish my book if “patronly folks” will come through with “essential cash” … great letter, exciting potential (retitle and some revising) …
Also, from Celeste, a tearsheet from a Seattle weekly reinterpreting the Mexican movie Chac, about a “diviner” who carves out his own heart at the end: this piece now viewing the events through Native perspectives … {We had seen the movie at one of Seattle’s art film houses.]
My compulsive reading, a suppressed hunger
Revising poems with a tape recorder … a whole new perspective …
24 Sept Sunday
Heard Bill Stafford read last night in E’burg at Washington State Poets Assn or some such … Grimes and Bodeen were there to sell Yakimas that had just come out the day before. Audience mostly elderly, stout ladies who sighed over lines and applauded single works. I get tired of so many short pieces that fail to break through the prose barrier and do the magic in the backcountry of so much of today’s verse, the realm so few have entered. Grimes said Stafford had done an amazing reading at Cedar Falls, hardly said a word except for what he read, but here he was explaining each one or offering some kind of patter for it. I said he was playing to his audience, and BG agreed fully. Two pitchers of beer for Grimes and me, Bodeen ordering root beer — “this tastes like tomato juice” — getting red beer instead, finally settling on strawberry. First time since he was 17 he’d gone a week without alcohol — “ttat’s seven days, not five,” Grimes explained.
The owner said he had hired Kitty “to give the joint some class”
A month of rain: 2½ inches in December: snow, then melt. Our view of Rattlesnake Hills (rising behind our shack) washed out in fog. Ground soggy, making up for drought.
Vol. 50, 11:II:78
(first trip to Portland, a city that would become our alternative to Seattle, though we never got to know it as well)
longhorn steer on Satus Pass Highway
a longhorn?
Yakama Reservation
Quaker meetinghouse in an old storefront
Service Committee on one side
First-day school upstairs
or a Friends’ apartment? (caretakers
overwhelmed by the Native display at the art museum but not the rest of the collection
Tlingt Cannibal Society dancers, long-beaked masks opened by strings
(bird that eats human brains, serpents that swallow whalers)
mountain sheep horns turned into spoons
halibut fish hooks with intricately carved animal-peoples as bait
or a life-size cormorant, hook sewn on with sea lion gut
Portland-town, calm as Philadelphia
Asian and Native
with an Anglo overlay
afternoon, clouds cleared
revealing Hood, proud and pink over all
– Rainier and St. Helens in the soup
but where, oh where was Adams?
Still so ignorant regarding this land
Haven’t yet seen rattlesnakes beside the rocks
Survived avalanches
Fished for salmon, ridden a horse, felled Douglas fir or hemlock
Sailed out from the coastline
Crossed wrinkled glacier
Stood atop Rainier, Adams, Hood, or Baker
Much of the Columbia River runs through desert before getting to the lush greenery in the Cascades and on westward to the Pacific. Much of the route forms the border between Oregon and Washington state, Here’s a taste of the eastern Columbia River Gorge downstream from the Dalles, Oregon, looking into the “Evergreen State,” photo by Chris Light via Wikimdedia Commons.
As for the more common impression, consider this photo by Lena Chang/USFWS, also via Wikimedia Commons.
~*~
14:V
Climbing Clemens in fog and rain, encountered my first rattlesnake, dead in the logging road; five rattles. They gain a new one every time the shed their skin, usually three times a year.
Old-timers saying this is greenest, mostly intensely flowered spring they can recall.
17 june
Slept till 9, met Whiz and drove from the Nile to Tieton ranger station, then out, in six-foot snow pack to the Timberwolf Lookout — the forest fire watch building is gone but great panorama of Adams, Goat Rocks, Rainier, the Stuarts — Mount Glacier clear, a ghost of Baker, and crown of St. Helens. Plus Aix, Bismarck, Nelson, Butte, Shellrock, Ironstone, and others.
Kitty, off to Seattle with Michael. Platonic, she insists.
Stratocone volcanic mountains poking through clouds are Mount Rainer, center, Mount Adams, left, with a very tiny Mount Hood appearing halfway between if you zoom in; St. Helens rises to the right.. Photo by Dllu at Wikimedia Commons. A distinctive feature of the Cascade Range is stratocones about 50 miles apart from Lassen Peak in California to Mount Baker near the Canadian border.
~*~
20 Aug, Sunday
Entries lately: weekend to weekend
Sweet smell of conifers in the passes — rain at White Pass
everything clouded in
U.S. 12 still showing washout debris
wrecked guard railing
and other signs of last winter’s thawing and rains
4 Sept, Labor Day
Ginko Petrified Forest (at Vantage, where Interstate 90 crosses the Columbia)
Once, 10 or 15 million years ago, 200 species of trees grew here … the Cascade Range, not yet up, left ocean rains to come far inland (mahogany, maple, magnolia, Douglas fir, spruce, elm, ginko, box elder, beech, butternut among the common examples)
When the lava flows rolled over all, only the waterlogged trees didn’t burn … thus forming this site, one of seven major ones in US, and the one with the most species.
Wanapum tribe, peaceful, never declared war on USA and thus no treaty: and thus, alas, no reservation, no land = seems to sum up too much of Amerikan political and economic system, including judicial-legal mysterium frateritas …
~*~
Sometimes — no, too often — I feel or am wrongfully identified in a situation, perhaps because I do not submerge myself solely in a field — so that within a convention of journalists I may seem to be too ethereal, artsy, not politically-addicted enough, a health-food addict, whatever — yet among poets not hip enough, too square, too wealthy (!) or whatever: even too success oriented.
[Success? Guess that rules out poetry.]
A drive today, up into the Horse Heaven Hills … no irrigation system in sight, a few trees by the gully …
Unbelievable pain, certain Kitty was gonna leave me at last … [early the previous week]
Bodeen phoned, trying to find out over the telephone whether his paste-ups were straight — so I met him at last and am pleased by the poems for the first edition and the way they’re set
Allen McFee on CBC: “And may angels guard your rest” … signing off for the night
Kitty came home on Wednesday as a surprise, took me to Gasperetti’s for dinner with Whiz and Wisteria — his announcing he’s buying a ’77 Porsche ($8,500), trading in the Honda …
Fine Oregon wine: Tualatin, meaning “gentle” or easy, flowing, Vineyards, a white Riesling bottled at Forest Grove …
~*~
30:II
My wife in the process of leaving me: I feel so burdened and so seldom dwell in the realm of spontaneous delight …
In Seattle for the weekend (with Celeste), so was Kitty, in another place. My realization that Celeste doesn’t fulfill me, and there’s some other reason we cannot conjoin — “You’re body shows you’re still confused” …
Spider crab, rock crab, Dungeness crab — Vashon Island, near midnight — the crabs beside starfish (headlight into the water) … boil them, eat at 2 a.m. … Brian / Paul & Judy — Marj stayed home in her robes
A seal that follows Brian fishing …
~*~
26 feb — a long week
Bought LPs in Seattle: Bolet plays Liszt, Eileen Farrell and Max Rudolf, Janacek Sinfonietta (DGG) …
On my drive home, no Kitty in E’burg apartment or her studio nor in Wapato. Learned later we had crossed between E’burg sites, had I stopped at her apartment, would have found her note; instead, not seeing her car when I drove past, I assumed she wasn’t home …
Tuesday, after a hard day at work, an icy bummer phone call from her, her hatred brewing. (Long-distance.) TV mag and farm tab, too, on my end.
Wednesday, Kent told me I had the job but not to tell anyone else yet. Worked OT, elated but still down over Kitty. Went to bed early but couldn’t sleep, watched Georg Solti conduct R. Strauss on PBS …
Thursday, talked to Kitty, told her I’d be up and take her to dinner Friday but then Kent told me we’d be taking our new deskman interviewee to dinner [instead] … went to hear David Wagner read at YVC — older than I expected, white hair … enjoyable reading, though to my ear, flawed: still too prose-like, very little magic. Despite his denials, he remains Midwestern Scots-Presbyterian. He should have gotten lost in Yellowwood Forest, Indiana, rather than by Hoh logging roads (30 minutes, he supposes) … afterwords, with Bodeen and Grimes over three pitchers at Ole’s Tavern (nudes on bathroom walls) … home after midnight …
Half-drunk, drove to E’burg and sleep.
Saturday, breakfast at Adeline’s and then off to art building …
Tender talk, realizing her need to grow yet keeping the marriage alive … off to animal shelter, found a black cat (female, seven months?) … PennZoil — saw a bald eagle sitting in a tree near the Interstate in Selah … parked and watched it … week before I had watched a great blue heron land atop a Doug fir …
Sunday, a lazy morning … made love, showered twice …
The porch, wrapped in clear plastic … the crates of books, her plaster casts for a sculpture, stones collected here and there (turquoise, too), feathers, roped-up shelves, glass canning jars, Grandpa’s sleigh bells, her fabric above the door like a banner, the copper-fish scales she wove.
I dreamed of an art show she’d mount.
~*~
Apple trees in winter … Steve Groom photo via Wikimedia Commons.
~*~
9 march
Irrepressible sadness, knowledge of losing Kitty — all of her virtues and comforts I love so well, as if I’m suddenly quite old …
Mon-tue nights, I finished part 3 of the poem but can’t get the last section moving … perhaps I should split it …
The red buds on the elm are ready to burst … Belzer with his tractor applying dormant spray …
28 March .. apricots have exploded and petals litter the ground …
Last Thursday no water in the shack … Ivar broke the vein while installing new irrigation line …
Sunday, back from fragrant Seattle … Celeste perturbed by my not being more political — i.e., the Trident demonstrations and her upcoming trial … my necessity for professional neutrality versus moral responsibility … people let evil happen because of their failure to take a stand …
On way back find a note in E’burg, “I’m in Wapato,” and then Kitty in the orchard perturbed by her parents — she had phoned to wish them a happy Easter but let slip she’d gone to Canada, Victoria, with Mark but not by name … and they insisted she not return to school this term … Jeanice ready to fly out the next day. I had to call back, talk her out of it. Then Sam called last night, followed by Vince at 1 a.m. in my deepest of deep sleeps. “Guess who this is.” Moon? Gil? “Your best man.” So he could grill his sister just after he had lost GOP caucus for Wood County prosecutor.
Her dad insisted she not commute and she vacate her apartment. The past two days, a complete stranger to me. Yet if she returned to campus, she could not resist Mark’s invitation for her to move in with him next summer, wherever he establishes his studio nor another’s desire to take her to France this fall …
There are moments I’m ready to throw her out and yet others when I’m taken by how exquisite, soft, sensitive, psychic and nearly perfect she is and how foolish destruction would be …
Before her school vacation, she showed up at the Bushwhacker during our lunch, somehow icy brilliant “cool,” and Whiz observed her cruel side: “What right does she have to come just barging into your life like that?” … with my attempt to curb my emotions after I’d just about staunched the pain … so it would start anew when she’d gone again … she expected me to be angry with her, not kind … and she stayed until Monday, rather than living on the previous Friday morning …
My mother-in-law: You two are more important than college …
Kitty: What rights do I have!
Tomorrow, we go to the Buddhist church for the annual beef sukiyaki dinner.
~*~
6 apr
Letter from Mom noting that Rev. Joel and Sharon had split: she’s remarried, but he has the kids.
Rain in the Valley, snow in the hills …
~*~
Tuesday, 11 April 78
Full doctor’s exam today — Dr. P.H., about my age, younger than I’d thought — an English major at Wooster with Spanish, French, German studies. New practice, no one there but me, an hour and a half ($31 plus $31 lab fee, blood tests) … great relief to know all’s OK. Hearing, blood (cholesterol 190 on an acceptable scale of 150-290). Only blood element out of kilter relates to allergy reaction. No diabetes, eyes still good. Blood pressure 80 over 130. Feel like a stud again. (Only danger is all that coffee.)
~*~
15:IV
Ivar’s frost worries …
Kitty keeps asking what I’m thinking, my answers never satisfy. She wants to be “free” but with me as a friend or lover. Can’t understand why I don’t just up and quit my job, go off to Alaska or New York …
Already cutting asparagus ….
Phyllis phoned, “Wanna go to a concert,” Philadelphia String Quartet (of Seattle) … hold their bows funny — rich, velvety, but no brilliance: not hot in Haydn but great effect in Debussy …
~*~
24 apr
Kitty phoned me at the office Tuesday, she’s vacating her apartment, wanted me to drive up after work but I got mad, partly wondering where everything would go, she destroyed her tree sculpture … back in our place, crowded but cozy … boxes still to uncrate [top of the barn] …
~*~
6 May, Seattle
Kitty flying off to Ohio, Bloomington, and Chicago …
We never see Sea-Tac airport from I-5, which runs under the plateau
~*~
8:V
So mean when I called Sunday night … won’t let me say how much I miss her or love her, tells me to get a girlfriend …
Already the hills turn brown, yellow flowers in Union Gap are gone
The uncommon depth of the desert grass this year means danger: when it dries, flames will be waiting: lightning or careless matches.
Dad phoned to say Aunt Edna had passed away, heart failure. Kitty had visited, leaving a copy of Yakima review. He was going to show Edna the apple poem, but Grandpa did get to hear the piece and was “tickled by the plumbing yard” reference. So now he’s the only one, except maybe Jesse Haines, left of that end of the family. And what will happen to Kenny now?
~*~
21:VI
Ivar and Harold are bidding jointly on a piece of orchard. And Ivar has a bid on another behind Doornick’s, so to speak.
~*~
29:V, Memorial Day
Chinook Pass opened Thursday; came through this morning on my way to Sea-Tac to get Kitty … some packs of snow 20’ high
Washington State Route 410 approaching Chinook Pass on a typical June day once the highway has reopened from its winter closure. Photo taken just south of Lake Tipsoo about 1/2 mile from summit.by Mrhyak at Pexels.
~*~
Missed having Kitty at social functions: Mortons’ party Saturday night, Mtg Sunday night … the emotional support …
~*~
13:VI half-moon
After everything came to a head Sunday, a storm of accusations and truths, we drifted into sex. Kitty was closer to explosion than I’d ever seen her, and the air cleared. Still, no resolution — “I don’t love you, but I respect you.” [If only I could say the same.]
Sez she: “We have no mutual friends. You make no attempt to have friends. … We never go dancing, I’ve never seen you drunk … you’ve done all that, I haven’t … if we went to a bar, you’d criticize the band and the people.”
She’s afraid if she goes back to Central, our marriage will break up …
~*~
Kitty called from E’burg, she’s coming home tonight. Had a fight with Michael, he wanted her to have found the questions so she could examine “her problem,” which she was supposed to do over her Ohio vacation. Told her she expected other people to pick her up and carry her load.
Somehow, she’s really happy for once, and in love with life (and us)
Full moon last night/tonight / summer solstice
~*~
Flash forward to now: Revisiting the previous volume was BRUTAL, especially my conflicts with what I have to admit was my unfaithful wife. Part of her problem, as I finally see, was her failure to commit herself to something beyond the present. Her reason for not having children was not, contrary to her proclaimed concern, about what it might do to her body but rather the reality that it would be a commitment for life, hers and the child’s.
As for me? I sense a Tendrils, beginning with the fact I put the women in my life up on pedestals and worship them, regardless of their flaws. Also, the question of what I would have done without her or some replacement; she was never an “editor’s wife.” As for her value of “having fun,” how futile and infantile that proves …
Looking at what I got out of our weird relationship: time to rise early, meditate, and write intensely … something having children would have greatly limited … also, without her, moving would have been difficult …
~*~
19 july
Just that feeling of treadmill: office, home, cook, clean dishes, to bed and up again too soon, to take off once more … what for?
THIS CAN’T BE IT!
~*~
30 July
Kitty seduced me, or whatever, in my sleep this morning. So long since we’ve done anything. Great way to start the week.
Her folks here Mon night or Tuesday through Friday. The Dolphs took off sailing, left Sam and Jeanice their house — a perfect arrangement. Now the in-laws are off at the Emory’s (Claira), possibly the cabin …
~*~
5 Aug, a Saturday
Kitty’s parents here again … nice, to a point. Right night, everything’s that point.
Good time to sit in the orchard.
~*~
8 Aug, Tuesday
Ivar saying he’d have no qualms about evicting us if Zenny were to become farm manager here. He’s making $3,000 a year running the Olympia blueberry patch.
& now I’m wondering if we should be looking to buy a place in town. I sure don’t want the responsibility but space of our own would be nice.
Came home zonked from work but a dip in the circular pool was refreshing and clarifying …
How difficult it is to be “clear” in “the world” — everything is wrong: use people, profit and efficiency above all else. Deplete materials, savor nothing, run but do not center. Unhappiness is the root of materialism, which it in turn sustains.
How quickly summer’s passed, how little I’ve been out.
The in-laws back here Friday p.m., off for Ohio 5 a.m. Sunday …
The Ala, deal off when the asshole started adding “nickel and dime” like 1/2 mineral rights after he had OK’d the deal …
~*~
And here I thought this was paradise? Parts of it weren’t even a good soap opera.
Let me confess
Keyboarding and then posting these is emotionally difficult, even painful, yet also liberating.
