Jun
9
I have been sitting near rivers lately. The Rogue, tumbling and hurried and gathering itself to burst forward in gasping sprints. The Umpqua, slowed by the deep horseshoe bend in front of the cabin, a spoon lazily stirring cream in a cup. Ospreys and eagles and those improbably enormous buzzards flying overhead. Everywhere a riotous cacophony of green.
All three of my boys like to be active in the water, tossing time-flattened skipping stones or casting fishing lines or easing into that first full-body immersion. I’m happiest in a chair with a book in my lap, as content and still as a lizard on a hot rock. I can feel the weight of the sun on my skin, I feel dopey with the heady pleasure of it. I imagine, somewhere inside me, a charging battery that will get me through the dark winter months.
At some point I put down my book and tip my head back. Breathe in, all that buzzing warmth filling my chest. I can hear laughter and splashes, see flashes of striped swim trunks and the glint off my husband’s sunglasses. Mom! someone cries happily. I smile and wave and I look at the water and I cannot imagine how it all works. How it came to be that this particular ripple, this one right here, has traveled its great unknown journey to splash against this riverbank where I’m sitting with my family. Everything that has led to this exact moment. Every tiny thing that could have changed the trajectory, every unpredictable destination ahead. And on and on it goes, never stopping. The water is forever, and I’m left believing in something like luck, or if not that, believing in my own gratitude. A breeze sighs through the valley, every leaf dances then stills. Everything around me speaks of the uselessness of focusing on the past or future. There is only this, and my god, my god, it is so glorious.
May
28
What’s on your weather app? I mean, if you use a weather app. What I’m wondering is which locations you have saved, and why? I’ll go first:
• Eugene. Because it’s where I live. Right now it’s 55 degrees and drizzly, which is kind of a depressing gear-shift from all the sun we’ve had lately. (But these guys seem to be enjoying it.)
• Coos Bay. JB’s hometown, where his parents live, a place we visit pretty regularly. I took the boys there for Mother’s Day weekend to stay with JB’s mom, since JB and his dad were hog hunting in Florida. I know, right? A hunting trip on Mother’s Day? I’ve given him his allotted amount of crap for this, but I’m still eye-rolling our calendar:
Oh yes I will be SURE to remember Father’s Day thank you for CIRCLING IT here I bought you a weekend spa getaway FOR ME.
• Elkton. The tiny town that’s closest, weather-app-wise, to our family cabin on the Umpqua River. I still can’t get over the fact that it’s only 90 minutes away, instead of, like, seven hours.
• Bellevue. Where we used to live, and I only keep this location so I can compare the weather and feel smug when it’s sunny here and raining in Seattle.
• Sunriver. A spot in central Oregon we like to visit. Sunriver is essentially a big sprawling planned resort-like community which sounds sort of awful but isn’t in the least. We just booked three nights in a rental house as part of our July road trip vacation and I cannot WAIT.
• Galice. Galice (pronounced gah-LEESE) is less of a town and more of a general area in southern Oregon on the Rogue River. We have a family camping trip there next month (at the Indian Mary campground I wrote about here), and we just made an impromptu trip there last weekend to 1) meet JB’s father and brother coming off the 43-mile trail, and 2) stay the night in a cabin. It was an amazing time, and I barely need to keep this location saved because I swear the Rogue weather is always the same: SUNNY AND AWESOME.
Okay, your turn!
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