Hazards of an Open Sky - Hwy. 395

The distraction was the sky – the way its clouds blew into piles and pillars, casting swift silhouettes across the sage-covered land.  The hazard was the temptation to match individual thunder clouds to shadows on the ground or blue holes to patches of skimming sunlit across the sand.  But to do so, meant taking my eyes off the road.  Fortunately, Highway 395 northward across Oregon to Burns has a paucity of traffic.  I travel it every few years and am inevitably drawn to its beauty and to its hazards.

One hazard is the temptation to drive too fast.  The sky is just so big. The horizons are too far off to seemingly arrive anywhere on time.  So, speeding seems sensible.  An incident twenty-some years ago, made me more cautions in this matter.  I was driving fast south on Hwy. 395 and I hit a sage thrasher.  When I hit it, it was just a bump on the windshield.  When I stopped and then returned to find it, it was a gray and still bird.  When I located it on a page in my reference book, it became the sage thrasher.  With it lying dead and warm in the palm of my hand, it felt contradictory to put it in on my life-list of birds. Shortly thereafter, I think, was when I stopped keeping the list and driving so fast.

On my recent trip, I didn’t hit any birds, but I did find a small flock of yellow-headed blackbirds on the fields near Burns.  They were the birds that inspired me to become a birder.  My first sighting of them was in a barnyard off Hwy. 395 back in the 1980's.

I liked the way the bird's coloring almost matched a near-by ranch truck, which I stopped to photograph.

I always wanted to be a rancher.  Maybe it was because my dad read westerns and I grew up when cowboys were heroes on every T.V. channel.  Lake and Harney Counties are ranching country.  I passed cowboys on horses, impressive barns and huge bales of hay.

It was my birder's eye that spotted the Canadian goose on the above stack of hay - nesting or resting.  Look again at the photo and you can see the curve of the bird's back.  Burns is on a migration fly-through zone.

The Malheur National Wildlife Reserve south of Burns was the scene last year of a rancher's protest.  And here I am, wanting to be a rancher.  Obviously, not every rancher has a penchant for taking up arms and stirring up trouble, but I have wondered if the big sky is part of the problem of becoming obsessed with boundaries and fence lines, of what is mine and what is yours.  Of who you are and who I am.

    
My theory could be faulty, but it is just conjecture.  When I consider living under a wide sky like the one along Highway 395, I wonder if I would acquire a habit of caution, of wariness for what might appear over the distant horizon.  My livestock fences would be to keep my cattle in, but their barbs would keep others out.  A protection and a defense.  I might shift from being open and welcoming to being wary of outsiders and unknowns. I'd watch that open sky and begin worrying about the weather.  I could see it coming from a long way off and begin fussing about its consequences.  Tourists driving too fast, coming up on my tractor moving slowly on the highway would worry me.  I'd begin looking at the drivers as hazards, wary of their opinions and their abilities to harm me.  I'd draw my gates closed and put up warning signs.  The sky, I would say, is the hazard.                  

Evidence

Evidence.  Guess first.

A.

B.

C.

D.

E.

F.

G.

H.

I.

J.

A.  A lobster mushroom.  Evidence of a theft?  While hiking on the San Juan Islands last fall, a man stepped out of the woods of a state park and offered my friend and I a lobster mushroom from his large bag.  "Cook it dry and add butter and garlic later."  Was this evidence of a bribe to keep us quiet?  Maybe.  The mushroom was delicious - just as he said.

B.  Bones.  On the side of the path near the mushroom man, there was this pile of neat bones.  Evidence of a predator.  No bears or cougars live on the islands.  Do foxes attack deer?

C.  Two dead waxwings.  Evidence of plate glass windows reflecting trees with berries.

D.  Wooly Caterpillar.  Evidence of a long winter coming.  Accurate prediction.

E.  A wash of turquoise water.  Evidence of a ferry's wake.  Just lovely.

F.  A dog with a Pendleton wool overcoat.  Evidence of a cold winter.  Wore the coat outside so often, it's owner sometimes forgot to take the coat off.

G.  Snow overhanging the eaves.  Evidence of a brief period of warming.

H.  Red ice crampons.  Evidence of a good neighbor.  He leant me his ice crampons after I lost one in a snow drift.

I.  A puddle in the snow.  Evidence my road will soon reappear as a slash of mud.

J.  A storm moving across the fields between Walla Walla and Pendleton.  Evidence that spring is coming.

My Cabin

This past fall and winter, I have been working on my cabin.  It was built in 1949 and rehabbed in the 1960's.  It needed updating.  The R-5 in the ceiling is now closer to R-30.  The walls are insulated and there are two heating systems – a heat exchanger and a propane fire insert.  The kitchen has a four burner stove for the first time ever!  The bathroom has it's first bathtub and now a washer and dryer in one small unit.  The bright and open inside made the long winter snug and cheerful.

I painted the kitchen and brought in the chopping block that used to be at the Pastime Cafe in Walla Walla.

The south-facing windows made for a sunny cabin.

All winter, I bought flowers to grace the counter.

Love my fireplace!  Took three trips to get all the parts delivered.

I couldn't do without a tub for soaking.

Just inside the door is this built-in bench.  As you can see, it got well-used.

This was an early light dusting of snow.

This is my little guest cabin with a view up the hill.

Oops!  I uncovered my lawn furniture two weeks ago and then we got this snow!

Two Seasons of Cabin Life and Writing

Yesterday, I put on my snowshoes, navigated my cabin stairs and took my dog down my road and up into a canyon.  When I returned, I gathered the snow clinging to my boots and made it into a ball.  As I did so, I thought of this blog.  I have been meaning to write here -about the snow, the cabin, and my work.  Gather ideas into a satisfying hand-full of posts.  It has been almost two seasons since I have posted anything.  A fall on an island and a winter for the record.

In October, when I was barely settled into my cabin home, I left for a writer's retreat in the San Juan Islands. The Helen R. Whiteley Center with its view of Friday Harbor became the scene for an intense and glorious couple of weeks.  The retreat set a course for me to finish a manuscript with a deadline of December 31st.  Hence my absence from the blog.

A Study Room in the Whiteley Center

My Cabin & Work

An island retreat sounds like a holiday, but the individual cabins and the assigned study room were conducive to long hours of work. The deer were the most common interruptions and I came to calling their sightings deeruptions.

A small "deeruption" outside of my cabin one early m

I  hiked most days, some with Catherine Hodges, the writer living in the cabin next to mine.  One day we took the ferry to Orcus Island.

I could live on the islands.  I liked the surprise of seals popping up near me where I sat by the shore or seeing the odd cormorants preening on the docks.  I liked the reddish color of rust and madrone trees.  I liked the weather with its sweep of clouds passing overhead and its occasional morning fog.  I liked the fall on an island.      

My Seal Buddy

A Little Cove with Knocking Sounds

Door of a Lighthouse

Catherine writing on a hilltop.

A Fabulous Tree with Horns

Those Silly Cormorants

Eventually, I had to return home.  But, I love my cabin too.  The winter has been a long one with snow on the trees most days.  Picture me here, writing.  Another good season.

The London Bankside and the Millennium Bridge

                             

                 

The stone stairway, whose footing slid into the brown and ancient Thames River, provided seating for the early and the jolly.  The Globe Theater shouldered the bank above the stairs. Behind the Globe’s closed doors, Macbeth applied his makeup, the staging crew fingered the bags of fakery blood and checked the trap doors.  Having arrived well before the play’s ticket-takers, prepped for drama, I looked out to the scene of the London bankside on that September eve, searching for some memorable and fortuitous entertainment.

The Cheese Grater, the Gherkin, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and a multitude of other lesser known rooflines postured boldly in the bright slantwise light at the end of the rare sunny English day.  The pub quayside filled-up with plastic-cupped ale drinkers, the sidewalk traffic moved slowly past the huckster magicians and the performers - men with hoops, whose languid and majestic bubbles swept sideways followed by cascades of little iridescent globes - jettisoning children into bubble popping ecstasy.

There was already a rarity of rail side seats, but as I nudged between two gawkers and looked over the edge down to the bankside of the Thames River, I spied that stairway to the river below me.  There was a seat or two remaining on them; that is, if I cared to insist that the two lovers scoop up their banquet spread on a napkin between them and balance their edibles in their laps, leaving me a seat.  Or if I requested of an elderly couple - sitting a chilly foot apart grouching at each other – if they couldn’t share their animosity at a closer range.  I erred towards hovering patiently until the elders, still grousing, left.  I took their fifth-row seat up, safely above the occasional lapping wakes produced by the river traffic.  Snub-nosed tugboats, barges emitting microphone squawks over the heads of tourists and two lone rowers.  I unclipped the lens cap on my camera and surveyed the glorious expanse of the tidal river, the juxtaposition of old and new buildings all overarched by the Millennium Bridge.

I focused my camera on the bridge’s passengers, snapping photos of the characters walking in and out of my camera’s zoomed lens.  An assortment of humanity.  The father with his two children on leashes, leaping like monkeys pulling in opposite directions.  The hunched financiers, heads down appearing exhausted and distracted, clutching briefcases.  The selfie takers, heads up, stalling traffic into bunches.  A continuum of walkers crossing the sky.

And then, that girl with the bike crossing the bridge. 

Unbeknownst to her, with her frock highlighted by the last rays of the day, the roundness of her wheels contrasting to an upsweep of stark and gripping lines, her head turned in curiosity, she pushed her bike directly and perfectly into a killer photo shot.  And then, she disappeared anonymous into the streets of London.

I capped the lens.  Shut off the camera.  Turned my head and there above me rail side was a photographer with a huge lens.  As I joined my sister, my daughter and her beloved in the crowd entering the Globe Theater, my sister said that the photographer had been taking photos of me taking photos.  Swept through the doors hidden, I too became anonymous, memorable and fortuitous entertainment in the drama of the London bankside on a September eve.

        

Building with Stones, Images and Words

Writing, photography and constructing stone walls require similar skills.  Traveling for the last few weeks in the birthing land of the English language and then wandering about the streets of Paris, I found myself pulling meaning from my surroundings, as if selecting stones to build a ubiquitous British field fence.  Each stone dovetailing into the others, dry stacked, connected by air and gravity.  The finesse of the work built upon repetition, judgment and the meaning of the work.  Stones were everywhere in the British landscape.  And images and linguistic gems.  I kept the muscles of my eyes and my ears strong and my brain alert for the right "stones".

Taking photos in an unfamiliar setting required a roving eye framing and re-framing bits of the landscape - calculating the light, the distance and the angle, the passage of characters or the juxtaposition of elements.

As I walked down a hill in Edinburgh, I noticed from a great distance these chimney pots looking as if they were being carried on the backs of the huge sculptures that were mounted atop a building.  The relationship was only visible for a few seconds from one angle.  The two elements dovetailed like stones, except instead making a wall, mine made an odd and interesting photo.
  

My camera didn't have a wide enough angle to capture the full breadth of a Monet mural in the Musée de l'Orangerie, but the moment that this Asian gentleman stepped into the room and twirled to pose for a photo with his dapper hat and cane, I knew that that was the photo that I wanted.  Within a fraction of a second other people entered into the frame of the camera's lens and the photo would have been spoiled.  Picking a precise moment with assurance is like selecting a rock without wasting time considering which of dozens might fit.
   

Once and awhile I see in black and white.  The black taxis lined-up by the Nottingham Train Station under the arch of the canal bridge looked like they might make a nice black and white photo.  Judith, my sister, noticed the taxis too and remarked on the image.  I felt like I was seeing a little slice of city life.  Rocks are mostly just gray, but the quality of the shadows of a stone wall creates texture and contrast, just like the elements in this photo.

Out on the Yorkshire dale in the first photo, the sweep of the hills with their scattered stones and green grass make the big picture, but the stone hut and the wall is what catches ones attention.  In this photo, the image that you see was a reflection in a fairly small rectangle of canal water.  Above it on the bank three men in orange safety vests worked repairing the equipment of a power station with yellow cranes arching over their heads.  There were buildings to either side, some sky beginning to darken and a length of water.  The little wavy image pulled all of the bright colors into its borders and like the stone fence, focused my attention.
     

Admittedly this photo could have been an ad for htc phone, but in reality, it was just my daughter avoiding having her picture taken.  This isn't the photo that I was aiming for, but I really liked the way it came out.  The gray sky was a perfect backdrop.  Sometimes the right "stone" is the one under your hand.  

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Gathering words necessitated capturing snippets of conversation or watching for written communications that expressed odd, absurd or beautiful sentiments.  Sometimes I took photos of words, so as to not let them vanish from my memory.  I was particular, weighing each expression as to its heft, its worth.  

CHIP BUTTY?  Did you pick out CHIP BUTTY?  The sound of this menu item was hysterical, but then what is it?  I had to ask the waitress at Jayne's Place, a "transport cafe" in Nottinghamshire.  (Yes, I was driving on the wrong side of the road sitting on the wrong side of the car when we pulled into this truck stop for lunch.)  

CHIP BUTY is a dish with fried chips (potatoes cut like apple slices) in a hamburger bun.  I loved that I speak English, but that I couldn't translate English to English.           

UNIVERSALLY REGRETTED.  "...Died here on the 22, Feb 1811 in the 49th year of his age UNIVERSALLY REGRETTED."  Captain Thomas Gordon buried in a cemetery in Edinburgh has one of the most poignant inscriptions that I have seen.  Why, I wonder, is this lovely sentiment not used more often.  The inscription made me wish that I had known him, heard him speak, seen his personage.  The next time I have the opportunity to write an epitaph, I'm going to consider if the person might be worthy of such dear words.  UNIVERSALLY REGRETTED.   

Private Grounds.  WHAT?  Maybe these are the waters that Jesus walked across.  The absurdity of this sign made me laugh out loud.  We were waiting for a ferry to cross over a lake on our way to Hilltop, the home of Beatrix Potter.  I think that she too, would have thought the sign funny.  These  grounds would require hip boots, waders or, if the water were quite deep, a diving suit. Actually, if using a diving suit, the grounds likely would be private.  Who else would be down there with you?

And, lastly, a conversation overheard on the street outside Pancras Train Station in London:

"Are you afraid to come to my apartment?"  

I think that this line would be a good start to a short story.  While I was waiting at a light, a young women held the arm of an attractive guy.  She looked into his eyes with bright flirtation.  He carried her pack, having just picked her up at the station.  They had obviously met before and she was visiting him and trying to impress him with her delight in seeing him again.  Her hand caressed his butt.  Her eyes did not stray from his.  He led the way off the curb as he said, "Are you afraid of my apartment?"  

He looked so serious.  The question seemed worrisome.  Until he laughed and then she laughed.  And he said, "I did clean it up."  

(Ah, the drama of young love.)     

Building with stone.  Taking photos.  Gathering words.  Worthy work.  Pleasing results all.

Stone wall in Windermere, the Lake District of Scotland