Home Away From Home

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I sit perched in the Airstream doorway in the Methow Valley as I write this.  I look out past the buildings at the smokejumper base, towards the Mazama Corridor and the mountains beyond.  It’s beautiful.  It’s a home away from our home in Idaho and I’m always surprised at how good it feels to turn off the Columbia River and make my way up the highway towards Twisp and Winthrop.  There are places here that I belong to now; a coffee shop, a sandy bend in the river with a tiny cove I use as a kayaking take-out, a deep pool on the Twisp River I love to wade and fish in the evenings, the hill I like to stand astride for sunsets, the secret spots I carry my camera and sketchbook to when I feel like being alone and being at rest.  The cashiers at the grocery store and I pick up our conversations where we left them off, last fall.  The cooks at Glover Street Market know I’ll want the spring rolls before I even place my order and maybe a green goddess juice to go with.  Each of these places, each of these belongings press down on a single, pure, resonating ivory key in the the black and white of my heart.  So it’s funny to make this confession: I don’t always think I would like to live here year round.

The Methow Valley is dear to me, I consider it one of my homes, but I cannot imagine buying a house here and settling in for a decade or two.  Isn’t that strange?

  How I feel about the Methow is flittering, abstract and at times, contradictory.  I like, very much, many things about it, but there are other details surrounding valley life I struggle to tolerate.  I blame it on my extremely wild, rural childhood which has caused me to have a rare perspective regarding space and and especially high standards with respect to freedom and wilderness.

It’s hard to tame something that has grown up wild, everyone knows this.  At times, during my childhood, adolescence and even parts of my adult life, I have been downright feral!  My issue with the spectacular Methow Valley comes down to human population and density.  The valley feels cluttered to me.  Narrow and full.  Brimming, at times, with people, livestock, habitualized mule deer and fancy fly fishermen taking up all the good water.  To contradict myself in a terrible manner, one of the things I love most about the valley is the people!  The community!  I cherish our immediate fire family, the incredibly rich and diverse artist community and also the general population of the entire valley which is so special and unique.  What irks me is the very thing I love!  Perhaps it’s because I love it so truly that I am irked, or maybe I am irked because I love it so truly, or maybe I’m just a fickle puss in need of a good pinch on the bottom.  Whatever the case may be, I flip flop like a pancake every other day of the week when Robbie and I speak aloud of the future of our little family, the future of our jobs, where we want to go and what we want to be.

It’s a tricky thing to figure out, you know?  We only live once.

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Anyhow, I had a regular, good old time in the valley and stayed on with Robert in our delightful little Airstream for nearly a week while he began work.  I watched him do his refresher work (which is rather vigorous) and jump out of an airplane a few times (always exhilarating), visited with some of the other fire wives who I am blessed to call my friends, dropped work at a gallery or two and generally ran around the valley doing all my favorite things while cruising in the best-good-old-’71-Ford-pick-up-truck that ever was.  It was a restful time for me after being with my side of the family in Canada which always tends to be a little non-stop chaotic.  I read a few books which was a complete joy — I’ve really been at the mercy of my work these past six months and reading has become a luxury I cannot always afford, to the great detriment of my happiness.  I spent a couple of days at the lake, suffered a rotten little sun burn and then piled everything in the truck and headed home to Idaho for a couple of days before departing on yet another trip (details and photographs forthcoming).IMG_3668 IMG_3732 IMG_3776IMG_3876 IMG_3898 IMG_3927

I thought a lot about the life details I’ll miss this summer while I am at home in Idaho, holding the fort:

-swimming in cold, clear rivers and lakes

-5 minute drives to great fishing holes

-really big ponderosa pines (I love the excellent company of quiet giants)

-seeing Robbie more regularly when he is working base 8s and his job is more like a 9-5 giving us dinners together and breakfasts, too

– La Fonda tacos…oh gosh

-Bruce Springsteen’s V8 purr

-the fluttery, papery flight of the poorwills in the headlights of my truck at night

-wild, wild thunderstorms rattling the windows at the Little Cabin In The Woods

-smoked out sunsets over the Cascades

-gin and tonics with the girls…movies in the bunkhouse with all the fellas…night bicycle rides on the airstrip

-early morning veggie deliveries from John Button

-late night star watching through the crowns of the douglas firs

Oh…I could go on and on.

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It’s good to be home in Idaho this summer, in my own house, with my full studio building, but I would be an awful liar if I didn’t confess my heart is divided in more ways than one.IMG_4112IMG_4455

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IMG_1305Gather those wildflowers, girl.

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Nightrise On The River

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Up At 9000 Feet

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I stayed up high for a little too long and made my way back down the steep face of Scout Mountain in the stumbling dusky hours, tripping through sagebrush and talus fields on wobbly knees and ankles, spooked witless by grouse bursting out of the brush beneath my feet.  It was worth it though, it always is.  By the way, have you heard the ruffies drumming in your neck of the woods.  A drumming ruffed grouse is one of my very favorite sounds in nature — it transports me directly back to the wide and wild arms of my childhood.  There’s no sound like it and it turns the key in the lock of my feral little heart.  I hear the drumming and something inside of me howls and shakes its mane.

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I haven’t officially told you yet, but due to some housing technicalities (namely, the LCITW is no longer available for rent), I am not moving to the Methow this summer with Robert!  Thankfully, no, gloriously, Robert cannot begin work until June 16th due to some other technicalities.  Since it feels like summer here already, I will inform you of the fact that we are enjoying, so very much, our first partial summer together in seven years!  We are rafting, hiking, camping and gardening galore as well as sipping gin and tonics, taking evening bike rides, and doing lots of dreaming about what we want to do with our lives.

I love to dream with him.

We feel lucky, time feels precious, no one beats at the big bass drum of my heart like he does.

Green Thumbing

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I don’t believe I have informed you of the fact that we have three bird nests in the yard this spring.  Starling in the chimney, eurasian doves in the blue spruce and magpies in the Austrian pine.  It’s been a thing to endure, at times.  Well, not the doves, I like doves very much and they make pretty noises.  I have neutral feelings about the starling.  However, the magpies are making me nutty.  Allow me to dwell on the magpie situation for a little while.  First of all, their nest is a hideous, pseudo-spherical smathering of sticks that constantly loosen themselves and rain down on the Airstream and one of my gardens.  Secondly, they make generally awful noises and begin their scratchy, dissonant yodeling in the early hours of the morning.  Thirdly, the adults tried to kill the cat on a regular basis until the cat ate one of them (it was a miracle, I rejoiced).  Revenge was very sweet for Rhubarb who had enough of  being bullied and having his tail pulled multiple times a day while sunbathing on the lawn.

So you get the general idea that I have not been delighted by the magpie nest in the yard, however, the chicks have been emerging this week and they really are the cutest little tender and fluffy things with enormous raven-esque beaks on their faces and I squeak a little each time I get a good view of one so I suppose the magpie situation hasn’t been all bad.  I’ve even sat up on the roof with binoculars in order to get a closer look at their antics.  Boy howdy they’re cuties, to be sure.

I do look forward to the time when their handsome little family disperses into the sagebrush higher up the mountain, later this summer.  In the meanwhile I keep ear plugs on the bedside table as a peaceful response to all the early morning racket.

Now, about the garden, isn’t this a magnificent rose?  Robert and I have been planting, digging, tearing down, building up, weeding, soil pepping and frolicking about the yard like we are made of ten green thumbs each.  I love this time of year!  The raspberry canes already look full.  The grapevines are about to pop open into broad leafiness.  The roses are coming on strong.  The peach tree and plum trees look very promising.  We have grand hopes for the peonies.  My numerous clematis vines are zooming for the sky.  It’s sheer magnificence no matter where you look here.  We have plants growing out of every nook and cranny.  We need more space which is, I suppose, why we are casually shopping for a ranch.

Today we’ll buy our tomatoes and I might pick up a few peppers, to boot, though I never have great luck with them.

How does your garden grow?

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