Juxtaposition

It was the first weekend of the year with no rain and highs near 60, so we made our first camping foray,  this one out to Kalaloch,  which will switch to reservation only later this week (and we aren't really much able to plan our camping adventures six months in advance...)  The Duwamish, the inhabitants of what is presently called Renton, stayed home in their communal long houses October through May, and spent the summers out camping.  The weather and landscape beg me to do the same.  I am not a hunter-gatherer in this bountiful land of forest, mountain, and ocean wealth,  and I cannot say if my lifestyle is, on the whole,  particularly better or worse than that of my Duwamish neighbors of many millenia. My summer forays now, like theirs surely were, are for pleasure, too.  But rather than gathering and preserving food and supplies, I gather and preserve inspiration, memories, education, and so very many thoughts of philosophy.   At the dullest of times, my brain is whirling, unbidden,  but this weekend, walking by the wild, relentless, unfathomable Pacific, my brain is in high gear. 

This is the romantic version of our outing, and it is also reality.
...
One of our children met some new friends from two adjoining campsites and joined their families for the weekend, walking their dogs, eating their food, playing on the beach and in the woods with their kids.

One of my children couldn't calm at bedtime, assumed by the adults to be keeping the entire campground awake with their crazies, and were only convinced to lie in a sleeping bag quietly with many imprecations.

One of our children spent hours crying about being cold, while also not wearing pants.  Also spent time crying about the food options.  Also spent time crying because another sibling was visible.

One of the adults tripped over the metal fire pit in the dead of night, injuring all four limbs.

One of our children was largely silent for a a good chunk of the trip, vomiting in the tent more than once on Saturday.  This has now happened too many times to be coincidence.  Jared and I realized that rather than bad timing of a stomach bug, this child feels very secure in their routines and spots and foods at home, and the reality of waking up in a strange place with the wrong food and dishes and activities was just too much.   We will have to do some collaborative problem solving, puting additional items on the pack list for the next outing to mitigate some of the child's discomfort. 

I, too, am torn between home and wanting to experience and know the unfathomable beauty around us.  To a larger degree than you might imagine, I miss my all-day warm Tiger tea and my several bowls -a-day of popcorn from my air popper.  And my Friday hour eked out to work on my giant mural painting, and my Sunday day to work on junk-mitigation efforts on the cabin, which is our house.  And my audio book while walking. 

This is the pragmatic version of our trip, and it is also reality.

...I wonder about our perception of time.  I watch the channels of sand change in a few hours, stream beds carved by tiny waterfalls off the cliffs, washed away a few hours later by the incoming tide.  Then made again tomorrow.  I read about plate tectonics and volcanism and uplift and trench stuffing and erosion on a geologic time scale, and wonder what is the difference.  I watch the everlasting powerful ocean, and I listen to scientists piece together the origins of our solar system and hypothesize about how and when water collected on our sphere... I listen to the gathering ideas about life making the bold move (over and over again, but all more recently in geological time) from the oceans to the rocks and wonder how something so potent can also be so temporary.  I wonder what God is like and what God's role and desires are in the waves and wheels and lines of time, which are bent by mere gravity.  The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know.  And the more questions I have, the more I feel I live in reality and less in the fog.
This is better than staying home.

Alphabet Soup

I saw an aspen.

I saw an aspen, I saw a beech.

I saw an aspen, I saw a beech, I saw a chokecherry.

I saw an aspen, I saw a beech, I saw a chokecherry, I saw a dandelion.

I saw an aspen, I saw a beech, I saw a chokecherry, I saw a dandelion, I saw an elder.

I saw an aspen, I saw a beech, I saw a chokecherry, I saw a dandelion, I saw an elder, I saw a fern.

I saw an aspen, I saw a beech, I saw a chokecherry, I saw a dandelion, I saw an elder, I saw a fern, I saw a gorse bush...

Some months ago, my parents very generously replaced my worn-out, won't-turn-on-anymore cell phone with a new model with all the functions.  I now have access to audio books and podcasts on the go.

Due to my current, increased teaching load, Laurel's morning preschool schedule, and her ability to sleep through the night most nights, I now take my daily perambulation on weekdays at such a time as to return home by 9:20 am, which is when Jared goes out for his.

All of these things have conspired to make it expedient and worthwhile for me to wake up in the late 7's and be functional (which was not a thing when I was night-nursing various humans AND going to bed late AND reading in the wee hours.... I have been a night owl my whole life.)  

A few months back, Linda told me her favorite author was Madeline L'Engle, and suggested the Austin Family Chronicles to me, which recommendation I took.  I have been listening to the books on audio during my morning walks the last few weeks.  She thought I would relate to the quirkiness of the family, which is true; however, the teenage main character Vicky is extremely less weird and more socially capable, by several orders of magnitude, to what I was.  I was a little skeptical about diggin in at first.... I had a dear friend in the late elementary years (and beyond) who introduced me to Madeline L'Engle, and I read a few books at that time.  I remembered struggling with her most famous title, A Wrinkle in Time.  A couple of years ago, I picked it up again in one of our many neighborhood free libraries and reread it, and struggled again in the same way.  Reality kept bending beyond the unexpected, and it just went too far for my brain.  Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia didn't have that problem for me, as there were only two worlds, interwoven in only a few places, and each world was consistent within itself.  Tolkien's fantasy world, likewise, is consistent within itself, but Madeline's worlds kept opening up new unfathomable shapes, and even now, it was too disconcerting - I felt like I was standing on shaky ground experiencing earthquake after earthquake. In contrast, the Austin Family Chronicles is completely grounded in the rational world, although it certainly goes out on a limb now and then to tell a story. It holds a certain superficial relationship to the Penderwicks books by Jeanne Birdsall, which I love dearly and have listened to many, many times.  By way of contrast, L'Engle's story holds much more theological musing and import.

In the second book of the Austin Chronicles, titled The Moon by Night, Vicki is on a cot in the loft of her grandfather's island home, and she is awake in the middle of the night.  In order to put herself back to sleep, she begins reciting poems, hymns, and verses, one for each letter of the alphabet, and she finds she is lulled back to sleep before she gets too far in the alphabet.

I don't have the mental store of longer passages that teenage Vicki apparently did, but I thought I might try out the concept for myself, choosing a different topic for each night.  Geographical places, animals, people names, plants...  

I have discovered a few things.  

1. It actually works for me so far, which I did not expect.

2. I am awake more times in the night than I thought I was.

3. Sometimes I will drift off after a few letters and then pop back awake a few times, taking up where I left off.  I am conscious of the driftings as my mental words start to get tangled and dreamlike.  Sometimes I am able to flow with it, and sometimes it wakes me up more. 

4. Thus far, I have never made it past N before I returned to a good sleep.