March 24, 2005

• I just wanted to add that by “I’m thinking all we need to know can be learned outside, not inside” I was thinking about the lessons we learn in the woods; that they might be more important than and every bit as thorough as the ones we got in class.

  
  

  Tues

  
  

  After all that massive timber at the lodge with it’s medieval looking stoneware and pictures of guys like my dad on the walls (who skied there after it was built in the late 30s) the temporariness of the condo was uncomfortable.  I lost myself in John Irving’s “A Widow for a Year” but three chapters later needed to walk.  I wanted to go back to the river.  Only this time I wanted to spend more time on the bridge.  You get more of the roar from up above.

  
  

  This has to be the dumbest golf course I’ve ever seen, and to get to the bridge requires walking at least nine holes. There are the same boring houses on either side of this strip-of-a course, and as I walked the gravel path along side it I knew better than to enjoy these man-made surroundings.  Even the woods suck.  In between the houses they leave it natural.  That means the few stragglers that somehow manage to survive long enough to reach some light are surrounded by the decay of the less fortunate growth that is choked by debris in various stages of rot.

  
  

  Happy to be off the path, I turned left and headed down a two-lane road to the bridge.  I could hear the river and see the moss.  It’s taken over these woods making it appear even darker and danker than it probably is.  Even after a solid month of sun it feels wet.  When I’d found this road in my car, I was glad to break away from the 20 shades of tan enforced by the neighborhood association.  Over the bridge and rounding the bend into free-thinker’s territory, I was struck by how oppressive these woods felt.  Today I stood on the bridge enjoying the open blue sky.  Through my window between the green grid of steel frame I could still see the white caps half a mile downstream. 

  
  

  It’s too dangerous to raft this far up but I looked at the rocks to see if I could.  There’s no clear path and it’s then that I consider the kind of path I tend to choose in life.  Why do I always choose the hardest one?  It seems so obvious looking at the rocks.  Any fool knows you pick the path of least resistance. 

  
  

  There’s no shame in doing what’s easiest, you can get a lot further a lot faster.  I’m thinking all we need to know can be learned outside, not inside.  It’s just a matter of paying attention.  I bet Wayne Bell knows that.

  
  

  Wed

  
  

  There is a slight chance I was on the Channel 6 news tonight.  I drove up to Government Camp.  It’s not even ten minutes from here, and on the way I wanted to stop at the Ranger Station and get a snow pass.  So much mumbo-jumbo later I left without one.  Depending on where you want to hike you night need several passes.  Maybe I misunderstood but it sounded like I would first have to determine whether the trail was on federal or county land and then find the grocery store that sold that particular pass.  When I got back to my car at Timberline I had a $30 ticket for no snow pass.

  
  

  Fuck it.  I went to Government Camp for huckleberry pie.  My youngest daughter goes to a friend’s cabin up there and it’s cute.  The cabins are older and smaller.  I’d never been there when it was so dead.  That’s probably what the news is about:  what a ghost town it is this spring break.  But they got a good shot of me.  I was walking into what I thought was the entrance to a ski shop.  It was a bar and it was 2:30 in the afternoon.  They were all the way across the street so maybe I am unrecognizable.  I went into the Huckleberry Inn, instead, and sat with my book and pie a la mode.

  • 4:07 pm
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