What is summer to you?

Summer has a way of sliding over me like my favorite t-shirt. It takes a little while for me to settle into my summer stride.  Maybe you relate. You know, first I have to fight off the nagging feeling that I should use my vacation to be productive, that I should EARN my vacation by a lot of work.  But then I went camping recently (and totally lacking anything productive) and suddenly it felt real.  There was a precise moment (sitting in the camp chair, feet on the picnic bench, joking about our state park neighbors) when I actually said, “This feels like summer.”

I have a long and meaningful relationship with this season.  I went to camp as a kid and then worked at a camp for 19 years.  I GET summer.  It is a magical time for me. Summer isn’t about weather for me. It is about 5 simple things.  What about you?

1) Being outside.  Getting my nature on.  Wandering into the woods or out on a dock and enjoying not being surrounded by people.  Having the view–the extraordinary view–be enough.  Be MORE than enough.

2) Relaxing.  Not I’ve got 15 minutes to sit down relaxing. I’m talking FORGETTING YOU HAVE A JOB relaxing.  This is the moment where your biggest decision is Should I make more tea or finish off the Doritos first?  It isn’t necessarily laziness–though Lord knows that’s an art form–it is about enjoying the pace of right now.  Nowhere to be.

3) Camping.  Now I know this might be sketchy territory for some folks, but hear me out.  Camping (or hiking even) gets you out of your space.  Gets you out of your home.  Gets you out of your parking spot.  It makes you small in the world.  Bye bye TV.  Hello, JUST SIT THERE.  Watch the way the fire licks the sides of the log you just turned over.  Stare up and actually notice that there are stars in the sky.  Stare long enough that you can’t count them.  Sip a cup of tea, tilt back in the chair and balance a book on your knee.  A BOOK.  Remember those? Heaven.

4) Laughter, preferably about something ridiculous and unimportant.  My friend and I, while polishing off cheese quesadillas, killed a good 1/2 hour discussing whether we could buy green vests and pretend to be the volunteer campground hosts.  We talked about what our duties would be and how we would hide the evidence if the real hosts came around in their golf carts.

5)  Being with kindred spirits.  My favorite people on the planet are kindred spirits.  They know me, they get me, they have no desire to change me, they banter, you get the idea.  True summer to me is saying to them,”I want to spend time with you” and their response is “Me too.”

What about you?  What makes your summer magical?

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Hiking in the Rain: A Love Story.

 

Northwest Drizzle is the weather of solitude.

On a hike I pulled my red baseball hat down further to shield me from the rain and pulled my black Gore-Tex hood over my head. By the time I left, my jeans would be heavier than when I arrived from the continual drops that soaked into the cotton.  Each step, a splotch and squish of the trail, was littered with puddles that squirted their muddy contents on the calves of my cheap and well-worn Old Navy jeans.  As the trail dipped down, dodging the trees to sneak between them, the familiar heft of my hiking pack skidded slightly against my back.  It held in place by somewhat tight shoulder straps and a snug sternum strap across my chest.  In the Northwest, the earth smelled warm and damp after a rain, a natural baptism.

I never minded the rain.

 

I fought the Ape Caves and the Ape Caves won…

When Don invited me to go to the Ape Caves, I thought he was joking.

Did you say Ape Caves?

Ape Caves are the “longest continuous lava tube in the continental U.S.” (thank you very much Wikipedia) and are located in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Southwest-ish Washington. They are a balmy 42 degrees year round.   He thought we should hike it.

Hiking in the dark didn’t seem like the smartest idea, but it had been so long since I had hiked anywhere—sans oxygen tank—I was anxious to prove myself. There were times I was constantly trying to prove that I could handle things.

Traveling alone.

Getting a disease.

Carting an oxygen tank around at 36.

Friends getting cancer at an exceptionally high rate and especially young ages.

I wanted others to believe that I could handle it. I wanted to believe it myself, that I have somehow “got this.” I wanted to think that what drops other people to the floor would not drop me. I would be the exception. I wanted to believe that I would not be disarmed by tests, by drugs, by side effects, by the anticipation of massive loss.

So—hiking boots firmly tied, flashlight and headlamp at the ready—we descended into the cave.   Its walls damp and green further and further down until they were bare and almost entirely dark. The floor was uneven and rough. I wanted my stride to be confident, handling each up and down of natural steps with agility and comfort.

Instead I was awkward. My arms stretched to the side at times, ready to catch myself with each unseen crack and drop of the floor beneath me. My headlamp—which seemed just fine when I’d checked it above ground, was less beacon, more tealight down here.

It’s tough to prove yourself when you look as if you might land on your butt at any moment.

About a mile into the cave Don and I waited till we were alone and shut off our lights. No one else was around as we put our hands in front of our faces—totally unable to see them—and marveled at our own blindness.

Further in the tunnel—in a moment we will call Ultimate Graceful Essence—I bought it. A sideways falling with my hands smashing awkwardly onto the rocky floor, my right hip smacked the pumpkin-size rock with all my body weight and my knees scraped along the calloused surface of the lava tube.

I’m not sure which happened first, the bleeding or the swearing.

Bleeding hand with peeled back skin like chipped paint and blood mixed with dirt and stinging. My knees—bleeding—looked like a 8 year old who had fallen off their bike and wanders into the house with dripped blood down the shins. Genius. Could you pick a little less convenient place to bite it? My hip ached. For a moment I was afraid to move out of fear I had really hurt myself and moving would make it worse.

There was something a little embarrassing about having a place called Ape Caves kick my ass. Had they had a more intimidating name it might have been a point of pride for me. I wish I could have impressed people with things like….

Dragon’s Gauntlet showed me who’s boss.

Or

Satan’s Wall really schooled me.

Instead, the truth of it was The Ape Caves—named after a Boy Scout troop by the way—bullied me.

Still, there was something about it. Getting up—battle wounds still bleeding—and continuing on. There was something bold about it for me. If it hadn’t hurt so much I might have sat down on the ground and laughed about it. Those caves were a physical manifestation of the butt kicking I had taken for the last 4 years. But you get up. Why? Because really, what is the alternative?

 

Coffee is better when your barista is bitter…

Port Townsend, Washington. The home of writers, the Olympic Mountains and deeply bitter baristas.