Never met an ex-farmer who left the land by choice.

I think it’s the taxes, ultimately, that swayed their decision. Or more likely, offers too good to turn down from developers.

 So many places sell expensive recordings or stereo gear but no needles or other support items …

Ear of Oats, from Book of Signs. Which I now read as Earl of Oats.

Saturday, starting to install plastic around doors and windows on the back porch — our new winter room, with plastic under the rug, too …

Calling for a blessing

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

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.

 

 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.

 

From a conversation with reporter Charlie Lamb:

Most of the Indians around here believe in Bigfoot. They all say they know him. My neighbor’s kids were fishing by the river in a January fog. They never go there alone. None of the Indians do. A big dark form came charging, rustling in the brush. They shot at it — the one kid’s gun backfired, burned his face. They threw their guns down and ran. Next day, a cow was found with bullet wounds in a pasture by the river.

Indians won’t camp near Satus Pass: the Stick People will stab them in the middle of their sleep. In the middle of town, they’ll steal your beer. Watermelon, too.

This is all I know of this.

In my journal entry, just noticed, my library book was overdue. [Only one?]

~*~

How to Survive

• Use your hands.
• Learn to fish. Garden.
• Mechanics are always needed. Welders, too.

~*~

The city sat in the Upper Valley, separated at Union Gap from the Lower Valley. At the time, I was living near Wapato in the Lower Valley and commuting between the two. Photo by A. Balet via Wikimedia Commons.

~*~

First whites in the region arrived mostly as American stock. Most recent immigrants mostly from Netherlands and Scandinavia. Generally, little personal ethnic awareness.

Unlike the Midwestern Germans, or Irish, Italian, German, and Scots elsewhere.

~*~

American values

• Money rather than happiness
• Automobiles above holiness
• Television rather than poetry
• Supermarkets rather than gardens

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

Churches can tell you a lot about a town. It’s ethnic components, first and foremost.

In the Valley we had Buddhist churches as well as Indian Shaker

The Indian Shaker church, as described by Elizabeth Colson in The Makah Indians:

People come and go, without waiting for the end of the service; participants and onlookers; no hymn books; praying not in unison; simultaneous performance, with each participant voicing their own prayers; shaking comes at the end, as participants stand shaking violently or circle the room as they go … during the shaking, several men ring handbells — “Dear Lord, send us your holy power!”

POWER SONGS

Also: “You’ll be a great doctor. You’ll see a hand sticking out of the ground. When you see that, you go put your hand close to that so that power will get in your hand. That’s the best you can get if you become a doctor, that hand sticking out of the ground …”

A map allows you to go back through places you’ve been while also looking ahead.

The topographical maps of the valley, especially.

Trail maps, too. The Cascadia books!

As I noted: Several times last week, in conversation someone got too close physically or gave a look that broke through the façade — my reaction of quick fear, a fleeting impulse to run — how far I’ve come from yogic self-clearness …

Reactions to Carlos Castenada’s Journey to IxHaMm: 

• Laugh! Lightning!
• Reverse all assumptions.
• “Everything agrees with me!”
• Create a fog around yourself so others cannot manipulate you by their preconceptions.
• No need to explain to others, your action becomes false in the telling.
• Caw like a crow, like an omen

Early July: Tuesday, went to town, looked at new cars — torn between the class and comfort of Audi Fox, the rugged opportunities (high country) of Toyota Land Cruiser … $7,000 either way … Land Cruiser eats the gas …

I had never even considered I could afford a new car before that.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.

 

 As I noted in February, ‘77:

Beginning my 30^th year. [I wouldn’t turn 30 for another year. It’s just that you start life at age 1, not zero.]

Quaker Meeting in our house last night, 17 in our little place [in town], Ward’s observation, “This is a comfortable room.”

Swiss-born Louis Ulrich spoke of gearing up to ascend Mount Stewart again, “a cure or a kill.” He was in his late 70s at that point. The mountain summit rises 9,415 feet above sea level and is notorious for its rugged steep sides.

“How are you going?”

“Up my gully.”

Otherwise known as Louie’s Couleur on the official maps. He was in the trio that made the first known ascent to the summit, pioneering his technical-climbing route.

As I would discover, beyond Wenatchee and Leavenworth two hours to our north:

Enchantment Lakes Wilderness Area at Mount Stuart, photo by Jeffrey Pang. via Wikimedia Commons.When we had Meeting in Louis and Anna’s home, I was drawn to a curiously striated large rock on their fireplace mantel. It was the size of a bowling ball but much heavier. Turns out to be a mastodon tooth found on one of his outings.

~*~

Throughout our valley, set up next to the mountains, there was great concern about drought, especially the lack of snowfall, which was the source of the irrigation water.

As I noted from one trek:

The Wildcat is not raging … despite a snow shower off in the mountains …

Or, regarding the Lady in the White Continental: And since there was no snow at White Pass she took the twins and flew to Switzerland.

Thing is, she can’t ski.

Well, I’m now thinking the twins soon became Olympic skiers.

~*~

People think of writing, perhaps especially poetry, as work but here I’m seeing more the frustration when it’s constipated.

Much later, I would come to see the practice of writing crossing over into prayer.

~*~

What I couldn’t see was how much change was about to occur in the multiple fronts of my life in the coming months.

~*~

From Spiralbound Cascadia with commentary.