Rocks, cougars, the Tortilla Race, ordering online, and typos.
Continue readingGETTING IT RIGHT
running
running@70
I began running in 1994, nearly thirty years ago. I was not a runner before. (Every time I have to figure out the year I started. My older son went along with his faster buddies as an eight grader running with the high school cross country team in fall of 1993. I was so impressed by the camaraderie that the following spring I started running myself. That fall I ran with my son’s team.)
It’s been a long time and because I spent six years coaching that same cross country team, I am judgmental about runners I see on the beach even now. I want to coach them. I want to share my hard won wisdom, such as it is.
Seventy is not dead. Not yet. But it is old as this underlit and unretouched photo makes clear.
RAINBOW CHANGES
I have always dreamed in color, brilliant skies and water and greens. I might be flying on the back of a horse or flying as that horse. My bad dreams are typical: unprepared for something like a test (grades 1-12), a class (university), teaching (standing before students and teaching something I know almost nothing about). For many years I dreamt of running into a friend who committed suicide—so glad to see him and laughing, then screaming and crying. But the good dreams, my favorite dreams are about flying over wild land.
Memory. Change. This post isn’t about dreaming; it’s about landscape.
Continue readingTHEN & NOW
On my run this morning I thought about how, as a teenager, I used to plan my life. Alone or partnered? With or without children? Horses? Goats? I was still dreaming of five acres and independence in college when I completed a sustainable living plan for a Botany class using a book by that title as a reference. [Five Acres and Independence by Maurice Grenville Kains, 1935]
I was younger than the young woman pictured below, but she must also have dreams of where her life might take her. Life will probably surprise her.
I’d hoped to meet up with a friend from my MFA program in the garden. I walked with Gary to the park, but she drove. She’d forgotten it was Memorial Day weekend, and I had never visited the roses after 8am. The crowds were astonishing and Felicity could not find a place to park. We walked back down the hill and sat outside Starbucks after she parked in the Zupan parking lot.
LIARS&ICE
Word count, dental visits, complaints about the weather, lies, and the lying liars who tell them.
YOU OTTER
That critter was galloping along the shoreline when we spotted it from a distance. “What is that?” Gary said. And it was someone totally unexpected. “ASHES ASHES ON THE WATER, BURN THE HAIRY LITTLE OTTER. GEE IT LOOKS LIKE SO MUCH FUN, I CAN’T WAIT UNTIL HE’S DONE.” Don’t take this silliness too seriously—Gary and a University Book Store friend wrote it in about 1971. Gary and I both love otters. Can’t you see him?
We thought we might not get out on the beach this morning. The rocks were slippery with frost. Streams had iced over. Castaway jellyfish were frozen. And there was an otter running down the beach.
Continue readingPAWNSHOPS, STARBUCKS, and RUNNING
When we were in college in the early 1970s, my future husband and I used to take the bus to downtown Seattle and walk through the city, visiting 5 and 10 Antiques sometimes, where my mother worked part time. I have a necklace from that shop. We always went to what Gary called the “Pubic Margaret.” Then we worked our way down First Avenue pawnshops, looking at guitars. That was our Saturday habit for ten years.
DISTANCE
Sometimes I lie to myself. For example, I promised myself a short run yesterday morning. I held out a single-mile run like a carrot. When I began running north, I was running straight into a 40mph wind and it was cold. The tide was going out and I repeated, “Just one mile.” I didn’t need to run all the way to what we term the Turnaround Rock, 1.5 miles north. I could stop at the metal stairs near my one-mile marker, turn, and walk a mile home. I was thinking there was a good chance that when I turned toward home the wind would be swinging around and I would still face a headwind. That happens sometimes as the sun rises. So I told myself: You can stop running after a mile.
I ran three miles.*
WHAT I SAW
Thanksgiving, holiday memories, oystercatchers, Pilgrims, and my Thankful story about a small child. Sea lions, and giving thanks.
GENTLY USED
The tiny closet of our condo is already stuffed with clothing I rarely wear. I need to purge. This is the story of our times. We focus on gathering until we run out of room and have to wonder: Why do I need this?
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 