An imperturbable demeanor comes from perfect patience. Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune and misfortune at their own private pace like a clock during a thunderstorm.—Robert Louis Stevenson
As I began writing this on Wednesday, I was reading Helen Whybrow’s memoir, The Salt Stones, which focuses on her family, her ninety-some Icelandic sheep, and how as a pastoralist she lives within the rhythm of her animals, the trees and grasses, blueberries and shrubs, the soil microbes and those in our gut, and all that lives in and on, over and above that soil and makes of her two hundred acres a thriving ecosystem. Her husband is kind, her step-daughter has gone off to live her life, and soon her daughter will follow. Her mother has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t always know her daughter, but is the same kindly person for all that. I read the final chapter yesterday. I felt grateful for the beauty she shares.
On our beach walk, we found bits of litter on the sand and tangled in the rocks, enough to half fill our trash bag. Mostly this was bits of plastic and plastic foam smaller than my thumbnail, but also a comb, a sturdy mesh bait bag, several lengths of reusable plastic twine. We admired the local bald eagles scavenging onshore. This photo taken at a distance—the bird flew as a wave washed in.Continue reading →
The storms come, no stopping them. They also pass.
The wind had been blowing since midnight, and the rain coming hard not down but sideways, off and on. Mostly on. I could see the ocean waves blowing back over themselves and sea and sky are both soft grays with a hint of green in the surf. Two and a half hours till high tide, but all the sand wet from the rain, and we did not get our morning walk. We got out the door for our three miles and had to turn straight back. We don’t mind a light shower, but this was a serious weather front. Storminess predicted to last without a break until Friday, which is not at all unusual for November. I used to count on a solid week of rain in this month—all day and all night without a break. But recently all bets are off. (The days in January of warm east winds and a burst of termites and carpenter ants drowned in the surf has not been predictable for years.) We average about 90” of rain a year—sometimes a mist or drizzle, in a storm sideways like a firehose, not usually coming “down,” and a hundred and fifty inches of rainfall isn’t unheard of. People new to the area are unprepared, friends naively suggest rain gear to walk the sand. Weather reporters in NW cities are alarmed by 45 mph gusts; we are accustomed to 65 mph. There is no rain gear that will keep you dry and safe in a full gale. Stay indoors!
Despite the foam, the ocean looks more tame in this photo compared to earlier in the week. The surf grew and after the rain splattered the glass, an updated photo was impossible.Continue reading →
It’s the end of the month I turned 73, and we were busy with cleaning and walking; I’m running a mile at a time on the flat and writing and reading. There’s more. The basalt shore is stirred up along the edges and we’re finding things.
I think about and intend to show a day’s collection during every walk, day after day. Here, finally, is one day’s “catch.” At left a very large “ugly clam” that looks like nothing special on the other side, but the inside is beautiful mother-of-pearl nacre. Then three striped limpets, the most common kind, and four white ones with the one at left showing damage from worms and the one at right nearly perfect. Just left of that and above another ugly clam is my favorite and rarest type of limpets with vertical grooves and a hole shaped like a droplet, pointed at one end and rounded at the other. The green seaglass is the second glass this week, what I’d call “medium size,” and that find is recorded in my daily record as “1glass” and will join other glass in a glass jar. Recent tides have been washing up into the rocks and exposing treasures and trash buried the basalt, including several bits of pumice from the blowing of Mt St Helens in 1980 in the past week but none this day. The feather is what I call a “two-spot feather” which may have a single spot across the central vein, one spot on one side, or a distinct spot on each side, hence the name. If anyone can help identify the species of bird that molts these feathers, I would love to hear about it!Continue reading →
I enjoy reels of people on their weight-loss journeys. I read one yesterday morning: “Eat less sugar, you’re already sweet enough.”
The best part of this organic gluten-free, nut-free vegan chocolate cake was baking it for someone I love. It tasted great—don’t get me wrong—but making it was the greater fun for me. (It’s only 6 inches across with vegan “buttercream,” fresh blackberries, and sliced figs for decoration with blackberry jam between the layers.) I do love chocolate, but my mom always made me a lemon meringue pie for my birthday because I like pie better than cake. I often do that even now, though lately I make myself a lemon angel pie—whipped Chantilly cream over lemon curd, in a meringue shell. It’s worth the trouble.
Fat doesn’t need much in the way of calories to sustain itself—it’s a storehouse, not active tissue. Muscle, organs, and fluids in your body do need energy to survive. A person fifty pounds overweight can eat exactly what another person with the same body but fifty pounds lighter eats and neither will drop an ounce. They are both eating for the same core. It’s why an overweight person can eat a perfectly reasonable diet but not lose a pound.
Taking that weight off is really, really hard for most people. There’s a good reason for that.
Years ago, a visitor in our home was sitting in the purple chair, petting our cat. Zora. The cat lashed her tail. I had to caution our friend that a cat lashed her tail when she was irritated, not like a dog would because she was happy.
The brown pelicans are still offshore, the nearest black oystercatcher pair had one baby this year, and there seem to be fewer juvenile seagulls this year. I admire them on the shore.
Every time I see someone on Facebook coo over a baby animal, “Oh I want one of those!” I cringe. We are a peculiar species, it’s true, fawning over the babies of other species and then eating them.
We are a couple of hours into the new season. Each of us woke this morning and thought: “We need a fire.” Friends were just here for the tail of summer, but each fall there is a morning when the cool damp weights our chest and abruptly makes us want a fire in the wood stove. It’s a day not to worry, but to hold moments before us, remember trust, and revel in the reliability of the world. Today was that day.
Only gulls this morning during our walk. We choose our path so as not to disturb resting birds.Continue reading →
Be aware, I’m going to write about firearms. It’s going to take a while, but I’ll get to it.
A tax code revision allows some teachers to deduct some [more] of their school supply purchases. In response, an engineer announced: “When I was a kid, we were responsible for our own school supplies and if you didn’t bring them to school, you did not participate in the activities.”
When I was a kid, learning disabled kids were left out of school entirely, and even then the wealthy sent their children to absurdly expensive private schools, most people could afford to live a one person’s salary, Russia’s Soviet Union was the ultimate enemy (okay, that hasn’t changed much), and we hadn’t put a man on the moon. Oh! And teachers could deduct everything, EVERYTHING! including travel, because travel is educational. Teachers were treated with respect, and though their pay was poor, the working conditions were better and the perks were substantial, and they were never sued. Most were overqualified first-generation college grads thanks to the GI bill or women with few employment options. Times change.
I took this photo thirteen years ago. Since then, the elk have gotten out of hand. A bull visits the local garden apple trees and then rubs his velvety antler on the Fatsia japonica across the street. There’s been a bull around since a town north of us (Gearhart) shot around eighty of them they considered a nuisance. There isn’t necessarily a connection between the shooting of all those cows and the wandering bulls (several) we have seen since. Just sayin’ this didn’t happen when I was a kid.Continue reading →
Through June, July, and August, we missed our early morning walks, but this week, we’re back.
There was a full moon earlier this week, a lot of fog, but not the heavy fog that feels magical. (Sometimes the fog’s so thick, there is a magical band where we can walk north, hear the ocean on the left, know the houses line the shoreline to our right, and see nothing but the sand under our feet.) This was a tame morning with color wrapping all around the sky. People kayaked during the week.
I meant to write about distance today—how far, how fast, where we arrived. Instead, mostly what we found.
Over the years I’ve experienced many unbelievable things. People have said things to me that were so shocking, I didn’t know how to respond. Then I did. I’ve given up all hope. Surprise! Things fall into place.
These are fabrics from my quilting stash. The ones at the top—the persimmon with swirls of dark chocolate and white at left and the yellow ochre with other colors spinning across are what I’ve always hoped would become anchoring fabrics. I’ve thought that for at least fifteen years, maybe fourteen yards, some of the patterns very rare, all hand dyed. The yardage has waited a long time, and pretty soon I will begin piecing. The stack at left will be one side, the stack at right will be the reverse. I will work from the middle with a center diamond and piece my way to the edges. I’m hoping I won’t need to purchase another cotton batt but can use leftovers I have stashed.Continue reading →
