Category Archives: Thoughts About Life

Today I decided that I don’t have to like February/March.

I feel like I should. I mean, there’s the whole “live life to the fullest” thing. But even more, I always thought my least favorite season was winter, and my favorite season was spring, so should’t I love the moment winter begins to turn to spring?

And then every Sprwinter, for every sunny day and blooming daffodil, we get two weeks of rainy days and bare, ugly trees. It gets under my skin. I start feeling cold from the inside out.

When it’s properly winter, I am perfectly content to wrap in blankets and sip tea and read books and sew. In Sprwinter, I try to go on hikes, and then resent the rain. Or I go on a hike when we have a gorgeous 65° sunny day…

…and then feel tired and grumpy when it pours rain two days later.

Enough is enough. I am re-categorizing Sprwinter. I’m not going to try to like it any longer. I’m just going to survive it.

My friend Simone and I sat outside on the porch swing, with only a light blanket over our laps for warmth. The winds blew, sending wet leaves to the sidewalk with a splat. We watched the kittens peeking timidly at us as we sipped our tea and ate pumpkin cheesecake.

“It feels strange being out here in this weather,” Simone said as the rain began to fall. “Like walking on a dry riverbed. That feeling like you shouldn’t be able to be here, but you’re here.”

I first noticed this strange warmth on Tuesday. The sky was as cloudy and cold-looking as usual, and I did my indoor work without once wondering what the temperature outside was. But just before I was about to leave for the day, I saw that there was a row of garbage bags on the sidewalk. I’d asked parents and church members to drop off their empty pop cans, so we could recycle them as a fundraiser. And here they were, bags and bags of them.

I went outside to move them to the play structure, bracing for the usual blast of cold air, and what I got instead was a balmy 64°. Delightful. Of all the random things I do as secretary, moving bags of empty pop cans was the highlight of my week.

Unfortunately, by the time I got home that afternoon it was past 4:30, and the sun was setting.

Wednesday was lovely too, but again, I was working, and the sun sets so early these days. I prayed that this strange weather quirk would last just one more day, and then went out to read in the hammock by flashlight.

Thanksgiving morning I was in the kitchen, scrubbing floors and baking pies, when the sun momentarily broke through the clouds and flooded the world with light. I dashed outdoors. It was warm! So warm! Why the bunnyslipper was I still indoors? I grabbed tea and a book and took a break from the Thanksgiving morning hullabaloo.

When I finally came back inside, I mentioned the strange weather to my Dad. “It was 60° when I got up this morning,” he said. “That’s probably only happened ten times this whole year. Even in the summer it’s cold in the morning.”

I got dressed, and then decided to leave the cooking to those more skilled than I, and focus on making bouquets. That way I could be outside. I took a pair of sheers and cut flowering weeds from the garden, apple tree branches with their yellowing leaves, hydrangeas that were turning a rust red color, handfuls of calendulas, and the last of the roses. Then the sun broke through the clouds again, and it was just unfair to keep this beauty to myself. “Amy! Jenny! Do you want to come make bouquets with me?”

Apple tree branches

Featuring Mom’s writing cabin in the background

Our Thanksgiving dinner was, as usual, a motley crew of distant relatives and people who have nowhere else to go. We ate dinner, had good conversation, and then Simone and I ate desert outside so that we could soak up the relative warmth while it lasted.

People hung around all afternoon, playing games and making jokes, but I was exhausted. I went upstairs and took a nap, and when I woke up, it was dark again.

I looked it up online. After December 9, sunsets will begin happening later and later instead of earlier and earlier. I can’t wait.

Note: After I published this, I remembered another story from yesterday I wanted to add.

Amy had printed questions on all of the place cards, and we went around the table and answered them. My great-aunt Allene had the question, “what moment from your past had the greatest impact on you?” (or something of that stripe) and began talking about working at a Children’s home in Kansas City.

“How old were you at the time?” Darrell asked.

“18 or 19.”

“Wow, you were young.”

“Well,” said Allene, “we could do whatever we wanted once we turned 18. The girls could at least. The boys had to stay at home until they were 21.”

We all thought this was really funny. “That’s not what they taught me in my family studies class!” said Amy.

It was a good Thanksgiving.

When people die we remember all the meaningful moments we had with them, even if we didn’t know them well, and when beautiful places die we do the same thing.

As the horrible Eagle Creek fire destroys the Columbia River Gorge, I remember the last time I was there, and what I felt, and how meaningful it was. I almost blogged about it at the time, because it was such a beautiful experience, but then it was the end of my very last term of college and blogging fell off the priority list.

At the end of last May I went to my cousin’s wedding in Michigan, and then road-tripped home with my brother Ben and my cousin Derek. We left after lunch on Sunday, drove straight through the night, and arrived home Monday evening.

Minnesota, South Dakota, and Montana were pleasant enough, although I must admit I slept through a great deal of it. Scrubby at times, perhaps, but at least the temperature was fine. And then we descended into the desert of eastern Washington. What a ghastly place it was that day. Barren, and a thick blanket of heat that my poor failing air conditioner couldn’t begin to combat. We opened windows, and the hot air moved, but didn’t cool us. I spread newspapers over my lap because they absorbed less heat than my black skirt.

But though we were hot, tired, and travel weary, with un-brushed teeth and rumpled clothing, we held out hope for the gorge. Maybe, when we got to Oregon, it would be cooler.

We got closer and closer, and then, as we crossed the bridge into Oregon, across the Columbia River, I felt it. A cool breeze. A cool breeze drifting over the water and into my soul, just for me. All of the sudden life was, again, something manageable.

We drove along I-84 with our windows down. The hot desert was replaced by trees of all species and sizes, and the blue of the Columbia river, and the cool breezes that drifted into our windows.

There was a car accident on I-84, creating a traffic jam, so we zipped off at the nearest exit and drove along the Columbia River Highway for a while.

The Columbia River Highway was the first road through the gorge I believe, but as it was just a regular little road, Interstate 84 was built parallel to it when more and more people began traveling through. I-84, though it has beautiful views, is very much still an ugly man-made rode. The Columbia River Highway, on the other hand, looks like it grew out of the mountain, with trees growing right up alongside the road, and little stone walls instead of guardrails, with moss growing through the cracks.

There was a traffic jam here, too, but I didn’t care because in the shade of the abundant trees, everything was cool and beautiful. Inching along, we soon began to see that this traffic jam was caused, not by overflow traffic from the I-84 accident, but by the giant crowds of people who had come to Multnomah Falls for Memorial Day. The parking lots were filled and overflowing, and people were parked along the side of the road, narrowing it so much that only one lane of people could drive by at a time.

And when we did get a chance to drive by, it didn’t feel like driving down a road, it felt like driving through someone’s yard while they’re hosting their annual neighborhood BBQ. There were people everywhere, and as we inched through them and tried not to hit anybody, I leaned out my window and watched the tall, tall waterfall and felt like I was part of the same grand party.

Multnomah Falls is a funny place. I’ve gone there countless times, and once I even blogged about going, but sometime between my childhood and now it went from being a pretty place to being a TREnDy place, and now it’s splashed across Instagram and always overcrowded. However, once we were past Multnomah and driving down the road like it was a road, again, we passed waterfall after waterfall that were probably just as beautiful, but no one seemed to know about them.

We twisted and turned around the mountains, past waterfalls, over bridges, always under the deep green canopy. And there were views, always views around this corner or that, of the wide river. And such a cool breeze, after that abysmal heat! A simple concept, but there are no words to describe what it does to your soul.

And I thought that I would treasure this forever. I took a few pictures with my phone, because I wanted to remember. I never edited or Instagrammed them, and they didn’t begin to capture the beauty, but I still get an inch of that feeling back when I look at them.

They say to tell your loved ones that you love them, because in the blink of an eye, they could be gone. It never occurred to me that places could be the same way. That one day, a fire might destroy these trees, and it would never again look quite like it did that day.

I don’t know what the gorge will look like after this fire.