Clark Lake Park Revisited

This morning I had another jaunt down to Kent for yet another appointment to have my teeth drilled.  Following the drilling procedure, I dropped off our hybrid a few blocks away at Saggu, the Punjabi -owned car shop which deftly services the hybrids owned by all the Punjabi taxi drivers who reside in Kent. (There is an error code associated with our hybrid battery, and this is our second or third attempt to have it decoded.) Then I wandered through my old haunts on foot to Clark Lake Park to await Jared's and the kid's arrival in the Chevy to retrieve me, once everyone was awake and fed. 

It was jarring to walk on my old familiar neighborhood routes, no longer familiar....a tree taken out, new paint, a changed gate, an added fence...but more jarring still: bits of woods meeting their end at the bulldozer's blade: eleven houses going in here, thirty there...and a playground gone, replaced by the YMCA.  The constant change churned along when we lived there, too, but having been absent more than three years, I have not kept pace with the breathless development of a once-wooded Native area, turned White farm town, turned diverse urban center.

The park was so peaceful in the cool sunshine, and I was flooded with memories as I wandered the 126 acre oasis in the middle of suburbification.  Second growth forests, water, rolling meadows (recovering from agriculture) with stunning mountain views...  I kept remembering toddler Anne, a person I can otherwise barely imagine any more.  

Here's where she pulled the little wooden wagon on a string. 

Here's where she'd run back and forth under the shady trees and look at the giant, seething ant hill on hot days.

Here was our favorite cherry tree in June where we brought and filled a little basket with sweet delights.

Here is where we picked the native and seedy black berries.

Here is where Anne would climb up into the tree in her "house."

Here is where Jared would hold Anne off the edge of the board walk and tease her about dipping her into the lake.

Here is where we watched the ducklings swimming.

Here is where we stood and laughed at the coyotes howling at the emergency sirens.

Here is the little hill that felt so hard to climb when I was pregnant.

Here is the place where we watched a family have photographs taken on a beautiful Spring day, much like today.

Here are the mole hills Anne brought her little shovel to dig in.

Here is where my mom found herself in the middle of a highway of tiny, newly hatched snakes on a summer visit.

Here's where I photographed the view towards Mt. Rainier every morning for a week at 8 am in varying weather conditions.

Here is where we buried the tiny life miscarried five and a half years ago.

Here is where I stopped to nurse little Anne.

Here is where we found some plums and watched the ants on the bench.

Here is where Anne and baby Lazarus found a geocache treasure and hid it again.

Here is where there is a seep in the hillside and the trail is always muddy but in the driest weather. 

Here is where we would stand to watch the cows.

Here is where we would throw bits of grass into the water and watch the birds.

Here is the tree where the bald eagles made their nest.

...I have been back a few times, usually in a hurry... but today was pure enjoyment...and big feelings of nostalgia and regret.  For five and a half years, I walked and ran and watched Anne, then Lazarus, play in that park nearly every day, and it was my touchstone.  When we were buying our house, there were a very few non-negotiables on the list: at least two bedrooms, a place to teach, parking for students, and... easy walking distance to Lake Clark Park.  Sadly, that last one didn't work out, and I miss my daily landscape.  I still go out walking every day in my new neighborhood, but I haven't found somewhere to replace my addiction.

Yesterday in Second Grade...

 ...actually it was Friday, but I am late posting...

During breakfast, at the second-grader's initiation, we argued over whether marsupials and monotremes should properly be classified as mammals. We talked through the the familiar refrain: if you have a problem with someone, use your words not your hands to solve it, and if that doesn't work, ask an adult for help.  And we listened to bass and piano music.  We also did some pre-planning for another 3D sewing project which has not moved forward since.  There was also some spelling and typing practice as the second grader worked out how to type search terms related to that sewing project pre-planning into the browser.

Then we loaded up for a field trip as I was not teaching that day.  We listened in the car to the Penderwicks on Gardam Street, one of our favorite audio books from the library.  We practiced our favorite Latin phrase from it: "Mendax, mendax. Bracae tuae conflagrant."  (Translation: "Liar, liar.  Your trousers are burning."  Hahahaha!) And discussed the English word "conflagration."

We took some electronics to the electronics recycling where we discussed why we had to pay money to offload an item with a compressor in it. 

We drove some four or five miles to the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood where we passed two synagogues, looked at the Hebrew writing on their outer walls, and discussed the decorative menorah on the top of  one.  We cruised the neighborhood looking for backyard sukkahs on that eighth day of Sukkoth, while discussing Jewish tradition and denominations.  (Anne spotted three sukkahs.) We also talked about the 40 years in the wilderness and read the part of Leviticus 23 where the command to celebrate the Festival of Booths is issued.

We parked, masked up,  and visited the playground at Seward Park overlooking Lake Washington, where the second grader made especial use of the zip line.

We also chatted with a census worker at the park and discussed the importance of the census for community planning.

After our return home, the second grader called her neighbor friend, and they painted a piece of lumber in acrylics and then had to follow directions carefully for clean up after the initial burst of creativity in cleaning didn't match the art instructor's (Grandmother's) careful instructions in that activity.

Then, second grader and neighbor played a game of their invention, and a big disagreement sent the neighbor home. Second grader asked for adult help, and neighbor friend and her mother returned for a therapist-style discussion.  

..."Anne, you wanted to talk about the problem you had?"

..."So you felt Anne was trying to trick you... Anne what's your perspective on that?'

(Some people might think that such a discussion is a side-track from the business of education, but I think it is one of the main things.  Enough respectful guided discussions over the years can only prepare her well for the challenges of adult life!)

There was bass practice.

...And watching of YouTube videos about koala conservation and care for orphaned kittens.

...Listening to more bass music - Classical, jazz, and pop covers.

I probably forgot a bunch of things, but for now I am digging the tossing of curriculum, the living life while observing all the learning actually going on, providing guidance and opportunities, and assisting as needed.

Turning of the Seasons

Lazarus' fourth birthday, Labor Day, was the last our last day of summer. We spent some lovely time at the beach - Seahurst on Puget Sound. It was windier than usual, and there were quite the little waves coming in. What a beautiful day! Just about dark the wind shifted dramatically; strong winds blew in from the Cascades, bringing with them our first wildfire smoke of the summer - with terrible breezy flappings and nasty particulates. Then, the following morning we were back to school.

This is a transition I dread each year. I have lived in the North my whole adult life, aside from two exceptional years in Alabama. The summers here have such long, glorious days with so much sun, and despite various weather patterns in different parts of the continent, the fall and winter are characterized by such rushing in of darkness, and grey, grey, grey in the heavens. Clearly I am solar powered and as the summer heat is rarely oppressive, I mostly feel Autumn as a time that my batteries go weak and I must power through. Winter, though, can be exciting. In late December the light starts getting longer, and it is like a weight is taken off. And if there is snow... Then I am very happy again.

I spend so much small, quiet expectation looking toward Summer. It is the time of freedom, of something different on the calendar, of adventure, and of course, of pleasant weather. Fall is the return of the drudgery of routine, of predictability, and of commitment. It is the time of being imprisoned in so many small ways.

Our first week back was predicted to be one of the warmest weeks this summer, so I had mentally planned on our weekend afterward to either 1) make a quick camping trip out to Lake Crescent or 2) take the kids to the beach as much as possible and finish up a long-standing project: filling our sandbox. [This involves multiple runs to Lowe's, pushing 500 lbs at a time on a rolling cart, loading it across the small car carefully, and then borrowing our neighbor's wheelbarrow to move it to the sand box.] But instead, more and more smoke rolled in. I couldn't even go outdoors to hang laundry. I sat inside with zero motivation and watched the kids jump on furniture and zoned out while they watched way too much stuff on YouTube with an annoying sexist/unkind background to it. I couldn't muster the brain to figure out what indoor projects could/should be done or even clean up the basics. I sat in my own haze, feeling antsy, and feeling sad that the fires had taken our last warm weather from us.

Finally, yesterday, we started to get some rain, and our particulate matter had gone down enough that it was okay for people without asthma and such to be outside, and I went for a long walk to stretch my wings. (It still smelled a little smoky, and there was clearly still plenty of haze, but for the first time, I could actually see all the way to the SeaTac control tower about five miles distant. Previously, I could not even see to the bottom of our hill.) I was musing on how our culture is all about being productive and seizing the moment, and how I was instead going to be comfortable with the fact that I had no energy or happiness in doing that during the smoke season. I was intending to be ok with accomplishing little.

I thought about it some more, though, and realized I had accomplished a few things with big impact. I started lessons with a new student family. I launched our new year of online group classes, and the first meetings felt good. I reached out to friends when things weren't going well (like when the toddlers, whom I'd left watering the garden, instead flooded the studio and ruined some electronics.) And I realized that what I was *doing* for Anne's education was not working.

See, I had this idea that we would just cover the basics with a curriculum I loved and then she was free to be a kid the rest of the time. And it has contributed greatly to the friction in our home. I've debated sending her to brick and mortar school, which would not make it better, but it would make someone else the bad guy. But the more I thought about it, why did we even need a bad guy?

The truth is, people are born to learn and enjoy learning, and what Anne needs is merely a little guidance and assistance in directing her curiosity in helpful directions and then resources to learn deeply what interests her. Some call this, when done well "unschooling", but that label has gotten a bad rap from those who misunderstand it or have seen it done badly. I like the phrase "natural learning." I am a person full of questions, and when I want to know something, I look it up online, I watch a video, a read a book, or I ask someone. And because I care about the answer, it becomes a part of me, rather than "required knowledge" that gets tacked on. In just the last few days, for example, I had some questions about child sleep, about the anthropology of hunter-gathers, about how to make play dough, about SIPS, about the genetic relationship between crocodilians and dinosaurs, and about cream of tartar, and I went out and learned what I wanted to know. I have known all along my job with Anne is really to facilitate her learning process so she can live a life of learning and curiosity. Checking off the "we did school today" box because she and I nearly killed each other while making it through a beautifully designed phonics lesson where she learned something against her will was not heading toward the end goal. Suddenly, "school" is feeling fun, and less oppressive. We are swinging into a routine which is pleasant, and I am trying to come to grips with the Fall weather and darkness, and remembering that Spring is only six months away.

Consolation Camping and Philosophical Questions

Last week was my 40th birthday, and I had wanted to do something memorable as consolation.  Various ideas and plans fell through until Friday morning, two weeks ago, I spent some determined hours on the internet researching beach camping options in western Washington.

Monday morning, off we went to the Olympic Peninsula, and we ended up staying quite a bit later than planned, until the following Tuesday, although we collectively came home once on Thursday (my birthday) after the first sixteen hours of forty-eight hours of steady, soaking rain.  The kids and I also came home one other time for a dentist appointment and two doctor appointments.  In true Ballance fashion, it was all rather spontaneous, as it seems we do the things we value with less planning and the things that have to happen (but have no love attached) with more planning.

I wrote and drew my way through the trip in a tiny blank book I kept in my bag, using a black ball-point pen.  I would have written and drawn more if there had been less driving.  There was too much driving.   Did I mention, there was too much driving?

Day 1: Drove out to the coast amidst errands and missing NP pass and packing and unpacking and realizing we needed to take two cars. (Five people plus camping gear and food for a week doesn't seem to fit in a Honda Civic.)  Finally found a campsite at Cottonwood, a DNR campground in between Ruby Beach and the Hoh Visitor Center.  Spent the late evening at Kalaloch Beach, where we saw a cloudy sunset, followed by a beautifully clear, starry night with a view of the Milky Way.

Day 2: Beach 4 and Kalaloch Beach - most relaxing day with the least driving.  Beach 4 at high tide is pretty intense - it is not for the faint of hear.  Kalaloch is a large expanse of flat, sandy beach - very relaxing.

Day 3: Hall of Mosses at the Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center and Rialto Beach.  First time ever to Rialto - felt so foreign and amazing! Untold number of enormously giant drift logs.  Rain started at nightfall.

Day 4: Beach 3 in the rain - we were the crazy people out there at high tide in the pouring rain with three small children.  There is a lovely creek that runs through it all.  Stopped by the two large (no, enormous!) cedar trees.  In the rain.  Then packed up our campsite in the rain. And drove home in the rain.  Disappointment. It was my birthday.  And the end of our first camping trip in three years.

Day 5: Baked a day-late birthday cake and visited Dash Point SP between rainstorms. Dash Point is a large, flat sandy beach where the tide comes in fast and everything is calm.  It's on the Sound.

Day 6: Drove back to Port Angeles in one car, having shed non-essentials like the camping mattresses...and finally(!) found a campsite at Heart o' the Hills in the Olympic NP. Walked in the old growth forrest.  Unlogged woods are SO unbelievably different from second-growth forests.  There is no comparison whatsoever.  The kinds and density of trees are different.  There are different things in the understory.  The old trees are so much bigger.  It is so much more mysterious.

Day 7: Hurricaine Ridge with views out to Vancouver Island and in toward Mt. Olympus and friends.  Salt Creek County Park on the Strait - rocks plunging straight into the ocean with tide pools and a huge kelp field.  A playground.  And trails in old-growth forest overlooking the Strait.  Then then kids and I drove home, leaving Jared at the campsite.

Day 8: Jared did the best hike of his life, and I am a wee bit jealous.  Kids and I went to medical appointments, watched our dumpster get picked up, did a bunch of laundry, cat, and plant care, packed more food, and drove back to Heart o' the Hills.  Attempt at campfire was totally unsuccessful. Must learn more about that for our next attempt.

Day 9: Sequim Bay SP (quiet bay on the Strait, much frequented by boats) and Kitsap Memorial SP (must be the most scenic SP in Washington - smooth rock/gravel beach on the east side of the Hood Canal, overlooking the Olympic Range) and then drove home, un-Ballance-ly arriving at a reasonable hour to complete the day.

The philosophical questions... I saw the Milky Way for one of the few times in my life.  Thinking about the nuclei of atoms,  the solar system, and the galaxy.  Wondering about the plane of the solar system relative to the plane of the galaxy.  Wild, untamable beaches remind me that this is an ocean planet, not so much a land planet.  Thinking of other ocean planets and moons and find myself feeling I am an alien on my own planet, seeing it with unfamiliar eyes.  Thinking of the planet as a single organism, which changes over time rather than a collection of individual organisms.  Connections between life forms in the food chain.  Visible and invisible-to-us creatures.  Prayers - and sometimes we are the answer to our own prayers....

Photos, sadly will be only on Facebook due to irritating issues with blogger.

My Tiny "Corner" of the Planet

Last evening around 9:00 pm we were finishing up dinner in the back yard.  It was not dark yet, but certainly dusky.  In the large plum tree which hangs over the fence from the neighbor's yard, a beautiful, perfectly groomed creature woke up, stretched, and climbed down the trunk onto our large junk pile.  He watched us but did not seem afraid of us, not even Nutmeg or my toddlers.  We watched him, too, in awe.  He is a large raccoon.  I have the feeling he has been watching us in the evenings for some time as it has been light so late, and knows we are no threat to him.  He poked around in the pile for a bit, then went straight to his watering hole - a large tarp folded around leftover roofing material, which collects and holds water with each rain.  He sniffed around in the short grass in front of the shed where Nutmeg had been sitting for some time.  He decided to wander into the open shed, and Jared walked over to tell him he didn't want to get stuck in there for the night.  Our beautiful friend exited the shed and went underneath to explore there.  After a while, he crossed the yard again, climbed up the gate, and then walked the top of the fence along the alley until he was out of sight, off on his evening mission of whatever it is raccoons do - finding some meals and socializing with others of his species?  We watched him in awe and are so glad he is here!  In our yard, which was quite sterile when we moved in, and has now progressed to European import meadow, we have only ever seen insects, small invertebrates, the occasional visiting cottontail, crows, small songbirds, an occasional visiting opossum, a rare visiting squirrel, and sometimes an exploring rat invader come from the next door neighbor's attic (I can see the rat family's egress from our back patio table - they come out at night, and I have seen a little rat face poking through a knothole in our fence, or a rat scurrying in the plum tree or junk pile.  Rats are not native.)  Now we are privileged to have a raccoon for a neighbor! 

In other news...

We are underway with Furniture Tetris, and have done some of the big jobs already - Jared has started teaching (online) this week in the garage remodel.  Lazarus and Anne have moved into the front bedroom.  We have seating for more than two people in our living room.  Laurel has her own little toddler bed.  Shed clean-out has begun.  There is lots more on this project to keep us going for the whole summer, I am sure.  For example:  hemming the curtains in the kid's bedroom, finding a Craigslist dresser for Laurel, migrating all the file drawers and boxes from various locations around the cabin and shed to the newly reinstalled bookshelf in my room, "seasoning" the chalkboard paint in the new studio, painting the trim, moving the upright piano to its new corner, finishing up the DIY coatrack for that space, going through more boxes in the shed, adding more wall-top bookshelves, hanging up our framed pictures, finding some industrial shelving for our little dining/mud room/laundry/kitchen annex to put all the bulk bins on, getting a dumpster for the enormous junk pile, etc.  You might get the idea, but somehow this list makes the project list sound smaller and tidier than it feels to me.

With our family spread into two bedrooms now and all of the teaching moved to the outbuildings (minus daily morning group class online, which requires the use of our living room spinet - it has been tuned in the last century, unlike the new donor upright in the new studio, which needs a full servicing, new strings and everything, before it is useful in teaching), our cabin feels much larger.  It is sort of a freeing feeling.  At the same time, it feels as small as it is - we cannot "grow" here anymore without some unforeseen creativity or a house addition.  However, I have been blessed during the years of my adult life to live in some places where I saw the creativity of neighbors in small spaces.  I think especially of our apartment complex in Kent, where the majority of our neighbors had come here from abroad and were ready to make do with whatever they could.  We were all in two-bedroom/one-bath units with one living room, a small kitchen, a couple of closets, and a tiny porch.  (Our cabin has the same square footage as those apartments.  But we have the massive blessing here of a yard, unlimited street parking, and the outbuildings.) Our family of two, then three, then four, hosted an exchange student and taught lessons in our small place.  Our next-door neighbors on one side were a couple plus an elementary-aged son and teenaged daughter.  Our upstairs neighbors changed a few times, and usually had three generations in the unit.  Our other upstairs neighbors were a family of four plus the wife's sister and her two kids.  And our next-door neighbors on the other side were three related couples with four children between them - one family sleeping in each bedroom and the third in the living room.  Our neighbors across the parking lot from us were a family of four, which grew to five.  So I have no illusions about what is required for space that one might get from looking around at suburban America and all the home decor magazines....

There has been a lot of painting this spring.  The garage studio: one layer of primer.  A layer or two of white on the ceiling.  Two layers of yellow on the walls.  Three layers of chalkboard paint over that.  And the fence along the alley is now held up on the outside by a thick layer of paint - leftover from a project our professional painter neighbor did.  He often has extra paint from a project which doesn't match anything, and he gives it away.  I will have to acquire some more for the inside of the fence, which is currently held up by... toothpicks.  If it has enough paint holding it up, we won't have to replace it for a few years.  Also, we need to scrape and paint the exterior of the cabin.  The shed needs some more painting, and the studio building will need exterior paint after we finish replacing the rotten bits of siding.  I also have not painted our mudroom, although it has been on my list for two years.  So that's plenty of work to keep everyone busy.

Also, I have gone wild with the garden this year.  Last May I used some leftover landscaping bricks to build a kitchen garden off the edge of our patio and I migrated the few things we had been growing in the pre-existing, nearly decayed-into-the-ground garden box out by the garage to the garden box.  This year I wanted to buy some seeds (a desire which I had begun to plan to indulge in before lockdown and victory gardens).  Our kitchen garden has a number of perennial herbs as well as rhubarb, but there was still space for a number of seeds.  And then everyone went wild with victory gardens, such a happy thing!  My brother built his, and filled it with starts.  When he ran out of space, he brought me his extra starts, which filled the rest of our kitchen garden.  So I determined to rehabilitate the old garden space for my seeds.  I planted it with flowers, tomatoes, Brussels sprouts, squash, and pumpkins.  More of the seeds took than I imagined.  Plus we had some really exciting volunteers from the compost in addition to a few ancient seed packets I threw in pots to see if they would germinate.  So now I am filling up our driveway with pots of tomatoes and squashes and pumpkins and greens and flowers, and it is really quite astounding.  I am collecting neighbor's cast off nursery pots and buying potting soil and I am having so much fun.  I loved plants as a child when we had a very large, semi-wooded backyard, but I have had no reason to engage much with plants when I spent most of my adulthood in various apartments with little access to nature.  Now I am spending a lot of time replanting and watering and weeding and admiring, and it is very happy.

No Weeds

The other night I pulled out one of my Allison Krauss albums for the kids in lieu of the U2 album they requested, and I realized how much I have missed listening to her the last few years.  In my teenage years in Texas, then in Ohio, and then again in Alabama, I had a room to myself, or at least many hours to myself at home, and I spent time listening to music I really loved.  In between times in New York and now in Washington, I have mostly listened to other people's music, and though there is quite a bit of overlap, I think maybe I have lost a little piece of my soul....

When I was out walking this evening with Laurel in the stroller (on a timer; I had a just-because cake baking in the oven), it suddenly occurred to me that my life motto should be pulchritudinem de micis (my best Latin stab at "beauty from scraps".)  Mind you, I haven't been searching for a life motto.  However, in the Penderwick books that Anne and I love so dearly, all of the family members have a life motto in Latin.  Mr. Penderwick is a botanist, and fluent in Latin - his language of choice when he wishes to mutter to himself in the presence of others.  This motto came to me suddenly as I rounded the bend on my 1.1 mile route and started on the uphill portion, and I could see all the possibilities.

Depending on your eyesight, you may see rather little beauty when looking around my substantial and metaphorical space.  My small home is physically chaotic.  My yard is part junk yard, part jungle, and part barren wasteland.  My wardrobe has its peculiar moments, overshadowed by yoga pants and printed T-shirts.  My music-making is only a little here, a little there.  One can discern tiny clues if one is searching, but many would miss the beauty for the scraps.  That is part of the thing.  I am a keeper, a looker for the overlooked - overlooked music, overlooked people, overlooked weeds, overlooked pieces of cloth....  I am a collector of scraps, seeing their possibilities.  Whether or not I actually create beauty, I imagine it.

As I have been working extensively in the yard and garden in the last week (powered by unexpected spring sunshine), appreciating the bits of tangled life growing there, a line from Paul Fleischman's Weslandia replays in my head: "In this type of garden there are no weeds."  Maybe that should be my life motto instead.  Anyone who knew me well at the age of twelve or so will appreciate my personal connection to this inspired children's story.

More about Vancouver

We traveled to Canada like it was 1999.  No cell phone service.  No texting.  No GPS.  No internet.  Ahead of the trip we wrote down directions to each destination on a sheet of paper; then we intuited any navigational mishaps through the use of north, south, east, and west.  We paid for food with actual cash.  We used our phones only as clocks and cameras.  We planned actual meeting times and locations.  Jared was there for work.  (*This is officially unfair.*) The kids and I went along for fun. As fun as an overnight trip with three small children over an international border in two cars could be (see: five people PLUS cello don't fit in a sedan).  I wanted to find things to do with the kids in late winter which would not break the bank.  So... We visited Stanley Park where the adults took turns playing with the kids on the beach and going for walks or jogs on the trails.  We took the kids swimming in the hotel pool.  And while Jared was teaching, I took the kids to Lynn Canyon, which has extensive hiking trails and an amazing suspension bridge.  It also has a small, free, and really family-friendly ecology center filled with interactive exhibits and dioramas: a small wing about local animals, a small wing about local plants, a small wing about the history of people in the area, and a kids' wing with more dioramas, a video with different animal sounds, animal puppets, animal coloring projects, maps, animal puzzles, books to read about the seasons, and toy animals.  All three of my kids were happy for hours.

I drove around fairly extensively on some main roads in Vancouver, but surely I didn't see LOTS of town.  There is some pretty heavy industry and lots of shipping, just like Seattle and Tacoma.  I noticed that the development is more dense and mixed use than what I'm used to, and things seem to be kept cleaner.  I did see some homeless individuals, although very few compared to what I'm used to seeing in Seattle.  A large percentage of houses are at least partly stucco.  There seems to be little in the way of landscaping.  And lots of houses are surrounded by a front gate made with metal, brick, cinderblock, or concrete.  No billboards, and store signs are less obtrusive.  Parking and left turns are a pain, and most of the main roads are city driving - very little in the way of freeways.  Lots of very high-end shopping and dining, and very walkable.

Also the hotel had no microwaves.  Our baked potato plan went down in flames with that.  Fortunately we were three blocks from Whole Foods, so we found things that our weird dietary issues could eat without the use of heating or cooking.

The Canadian border agents were professional and armed, and seemed to be mostly female and friendly.  The American border agents were profession, armed, and gruff, and seemed to be mostly male and very militarized.  More "equipment" and metal gates and cameras entering the US, at least to the untrained eye.  These two groups are working right next to each other.  I wonder if they are friends and if they ever cross the street to socialize.

If you are not aware (and I was't until just recently), there is a little tiny bit of British Columbia, one town worth, which juts south of the 49th parallel, making it part of Washington state.  It's called Point Roberts.  The school there only runs through third grade, so from the fourth grade up, Point Roberts kids are bussed across the border into Canada and then a 45 minute drive back across the border to Blaine, Washington.  Can you imagine going across two international check points twice a day in a school bus?

Imperialist Gardens

Yesterday morning as I was walking the neighborhood solo while the kids were still sleeping, basking in the morning sunlight, enjoying exploring everything I can see, my mind was whirring, as it is often wont to.  Some themes from the previous night's post came spinning out in new ways, and now I have more to say, and it is not about schooling, although maybe it is...

It is about colonialism in all the negative senses of the word. 

As I look at yards around houses, I see familiar things.  I see a few large native trees.  I see some smaller ornamental trees, usually imported from another continent.  I see lawn.  The lush lawns are made up of only one or two species of grass not from around here.  The scraggly lawns are made up of whatever felt like growing.  Most of them, lush or otherwise, are regularly mowed into submission, chopped to a length deemed attractive by the residents, or to a length imagined to be deemed attractive by the neighbors.  There are flower beds containing shrubs and flowers and various plantings, mostly imported from other continents.  And there are the gardener's nemesis: weeds.  Weeds, of course, are ugly plants that we don't want soiling our space.  Or a gentler definition: weeds are any plant that is not where we want it to be. 

In a naturally balanced ecosystem, of course, there are no weeds.  Weeds are only defined by what humans don't want.

Think me crazy, but I have always been sympathetic to weeds, and I have felt badly about pulling them, preferring to let life live its own way.  But of course, that isn't practical is it? 

I realized on my walk, all of a sudden, that the imperialist culture of Western Europe (which we erroneously conflate with Christianity ALL THE TIME) that took over the world, snatching unknown people for forced labor, and rounding up or killing other unknown people which were in the way, to create a lifestyle of comfort for ourselves, is exactly how we create havens of rest around our homes, too.  "Weeds" are how we see the native plants which are the foundation of the carefully balanced ecosystem in our place.  And "weeds" are how we see native people who don't fit in with our culture of comfort.  We bring in other, more-comfortable-to-us species to please our senses without considering the soil, the water systems, the insects, the birds, or anything else that lives in symbiosis.

This was heavily on the back burner of my mind while I was teaching in my corner room at the church in Gig Harbor late yesterday afternoon, when a man came around the corner with a LARGE propane torch, setting fire to the weeds growing up between the landscaping rocks just outside my window.  He got carried away, and accidentally burned some young trees and ferns and shrubs which were meant to stay.  With heavy clouds of smoke going up, he had to run the hose on his fires and stomp them out, leaving charred blackness in the so-called landscaping.  Then he came back with a huge plastic bucket labelled weed-killer. 

The man was merely doing his job. 

I felt angry.  Vaguely angry that he was endangering the building with roaring fires so close to the eaves.  Very angry that he let the fires burn some carefully bedded plants.  Partially angry at the environmental degradation caused by unnecessary smoke, the production of propane for this purpose, and the poison of the weed killer.  But I was most angry that we see the miracle of tenacious, beautiful native life, growing in its own perfect spot, as a nuisance which must be killed. 

But the man was merely doing his job. 

We do this stuff ALL the time in so many ways.  And we have NO idea what we are doing.  We are all just doing our jobs.  This is how its always been done.  This is the most efficient, expedient way.  This is what's practical.  This is what the neighbors expect.  This is normal. 

We never stop to think outside the box - our little box of cultural comfort handed down to us generation after generation.  I come from slave-owners many generations back.  Slavery is officially illegal, but do you think all the attitudes which made it possible are dead?  I doubt it.  There are tiny whispers in the way we do little day-to-day things, handed down from parents to children, grandparents to grandchildren. 

Looking at imperialist gardens, it is easy for me to see today how we could slash and burn whole forests, kidnap families in the middle of the night and ship them overseas to work unpaid under the eye of the whip until death do us part, selling off their family members at a whim,  pour poison in people's drinking water for financial gain and lock the clean-up in irrelevant legal battles for years, create damaging earthquakes to wrest bits of ancient forests out of the ground to propel us from place to place at our convenience, laugh at the possibility that the only way we have left for the few tough-enough-to-still-be-alive remaining rightful inhabitants of the continent to find their way forward is to let them swindle us in casinos, consider nomads eyesore to be rounded up and placed somewhere out of sight (was that the Plains Natives in the 1800s? or is that the tent-dwellers in large cities in the 2010s?).  We are a culture that uses force, coercion, and abuse to control those we see beneath us, and THAT INCLUDES OUR VERY OWN CHILDREN.  And then we are unhappy people, and we wonder why.

I wish I could take all this baggage to the dump, leave it there, and start fresh.  The enormous dump filled up with things that should never have been made in the first place.  Garbage that will never rot.  Plastic that will break into smaller and smaller pieces and haunt us for hundreds or thousands of years.  The everything that you buy which is packaged in plastic.  Or the garbage that never even made it to the dump, which the sea water has collected in rafts the size of Texas.  Unprecedented-in-the-history-of-the-world conspicuous consumption at a daily level, and we can't even see that we're doing it.  It's cheap.  It's convenient.  It keeps us in our comfortable box.  If we want to imagine we don't need it all, never fear: every day we are advertised to in so many ways.  And we have the biological push to keep up with those around us, so we keep chasing all this pointlessness...

I wish I could take all this baggage to the dump, leave it there, and start fresh.  But the reality is slower and more difficult.  We must work through it little by little, day by day, painfully.  True change is often slow.

Noticing the problem is the first step.  Anger is a signal.  When we notice the signal as a call to action, we are letting anger work its magic.  Get good and angry...

Summer Sunsets

The summer sunsets are getting earlier and earlier, which always makes me sad.  The days of June feel so hopeful when it is light at 5:00 in the morning and doesn't get dark until 10:00.  Now autumn is coming, and with it a return to the weekly schedule.  And rain.  And more darkness.  The flowers are winding down.  We aren't starting our fall teaching schedule until the second week of September, although some of the districts around us go back to school in just another week.

This weekend felt refreshing and heavy, both.  I needed a little space and time without events, because I was SO tired.  And all weekend I felt inordinately sad about not taking any of our annual camping trips or going on any of our favorite hikes this summer.

Last year we said a pre-emptive no to all camping trips, with the intention of making time to work on the garage.  Then we did not work on the garage, because we ended up preparing for a concert, which takes daily focus and preparation for weeks and months.  At the end of that summer, we regretted the camping ban, and vowed never to have a no-camping summer again.

This summer I planned at least one camping trip, which was then cancelled due to exhaustion and actual work on the garage.  Then in addition to a remix of the same concert from last summer, we got asked to do a much bigger concert in September.  So that means lots more preparation for weeks and months.  Which I, for one, am behind on, on account of slicing my finger two weeks ago.  It is not completely back to normal and may not be for some time, but I am able to use it at about 90% normalcy now when I am playing.

The upshot of our vow to enjoy summer is, we got to go to the beach for a few hours on July 4, but there was no camping.  We still haven't had a chance to do anything for our anniversary yet, which was a month ago.  I had to back out of going on my brother's birthday hike at Mt. Rainier yesterday due to needing to practice and family logistics.  Also this was the weekend I would have planned to do my annual birthday camping trip at Mowich Lake, which of course, was out of the question, too.  Plus if we want to back up for some added drama, we didn't get to do Jared's annual birthday trip to Hurricane Ridge in January as the government shutdown meant they didn't plow and no one could get up there.

About the birthday this week... I'm feeling sad about that, too.  Turning 29 was really hard on me.  Painfully hard.  39 coming up doesn't seem quite so bad, but I am feeling like it's the end of a good era...  Why are we Westerners so obsessed with numbers?  I always have been, and I always loved math.  There is no escape.

What I want most is to cancel all obligations for the next week (not possible!) and escape to the rugged wilderness of this beautiful state.  I'm paying out the ears to live here for a reason.

While I watch summer winding down and am investing time trying to get my fall schedule organized and recruit more students to fill it up my empty hours, I keep waiting for my summer to start.  The time when I go swimming and climb mountains and watch my kids play at the beach.  I guess that will have to wait for next summer...

Outsider Eyes

During our week in Walla Walla (more properly, the adjoining smaller town of College Place) I took a lot of photos during my early morning perambulations.  I was fascinated, looking at the place with eyes of an outsider.  The town started in the 1890s with the construction of a Seventh-Day Adventist College, truly out in the middle of nowhere.  It is in high desert, not dissimilar to parts of Arizona or West Texas, for those of my readers more familiar with those landscapes.  You wouldn't know that from these pictures, because the area is HEAVILY irrigated.  I tried to capture lots of pictures from around town which contain the water tower - a central landmark which the locals probably give very little thought to, but is the only thing making the town a green and even agricultural oasis, rather than hardscrabble desert where nothing grows taller than the tumbleweeds and grass.  The church is a central influence, and this particular university church is more progressive in its traditionally conservative SDA theology, with its quirky 19th-century eschatology and emphasis on holy and practical living.  It is certainly, also a college town, with lots of small rentals.  A third influence, which I did not get a photo of, is the Super Walmart which has invaded the town in recent years and is open until quite late.  And a fourth is the Fort with its canons, which was built to defend White invaders (aka settlers) from the Natives whose land they stole. (Again, no picture.)  The town is so small that in only a few blocks of walking you are not "in town" but in rural agricultural areas.  Then you are in the Interior American West with its Go West Young Man concept of limitless land and limitless resources for the exploiting (and keep your hands off my business, buddy.)  College Place has had homes built in it from every decade from the 1890s through the present.  Truly fascinating.  

 

 The former College church, now used for other purposes by the University:

Currently abandoned, my best guess is that this was the very first house of worship built in town:

 

The tallest building in town, by far, is this dormitory:

Seventh-day Adventists have their own scouting organization called Pathfinders:

 

In town, there are alleys between all the houses pre-1940s:

 Thinking about the contrasts between domesticated, imported animals, and the wild animals native to this land:

Someone has found a way to harness the sunshine which is in full supply here to subsidize modern life:

 

The cemetery here is called New Hope, and was founded in 1892, just a year after the college.  Life and death go on and on.  I walked in it last year, but I couldn't bear to do it again, because I can't stop myself reading headstones, and the headstones of children are particularly heartbreaking.

 

The current University Church, with its peculiar otherworldly facade:

 

And a little piece of family history.  Nancy's grandparents lived in this house, and she visited them here frequently as a child.  I captured all the descendants in front of it.