HinesSight

June blossoms on the Metolius

Here's photographic proof – why the Metolius River dazzles the eye (and soul) in what passes for spring in central Oregon. Namely, the middling part of June.

Just before Lake Creek the family dog explored a grassy island.

Away from the river, on top of a butte, old tree and new tree showed off against (almost) clear sky.

A bit farther along, some yin and yang: bright flowers and gray rocks.

Moving back to the Metolius, natural flower arrangements dot the river. It's constant spring-fed flow encourages growth that wouldn't be possible on up and down rivers. [Appreciate these shots: wading in the water I instantly recognized that it's damn cold – snow melt once removed.]

Ducks don't seem to mind the temperature. But this one was perched on a warm log.

There's lots of natural bridges, since logs are left where they lie in this wild and scenic river.

Metolius light and shadow.

I'd love to have this in my yard. Along with the river, of course.

I think "Metolius Zen" when I see these photos. But Zen is the reflection of nature; this is the original.

White water, yellow flower. Nice.

A few years ago a large tree fell and broke apart in the Metolius. I've been watching it evolve. Now it's become flowery modern art.

One of the more attractive log jams you'll find in a river.

More Zen. I love the water swirls.

Metolius yin and yang.

Probably my favorite photo. I have a little sand garden in my office that I rake, making patterns like this around the rocks.

Decay and growth. Some days I feel like the stump, other days like the flower.

Metolius River hike from Camp Sherman store

This is our sort of hiking adventure: one that begins and ends at a charming country store that serves expresso. Namely, the Camp Sherman store in central Oregon's beautiful Metolius River recreation area.

We've hiked most of the easily accessible stretches of the Metolius many times. They're all marvelous.

The two mile path downstream of the store (west side of the river) is enjoyable because it's level, passes by interesting cabins on forest service land, and is on a particularly attractive section of the Metolius (not that there's an unattractive section).

Plus, there's the latte thing. And public restrooms at miles 0, 1, 3, and 4 of the roundtrip four mile hike, a potential benefit if you energized yourself with a large quad expresso before you started off.

Here's a You Tube video of the hike we took a few days ago.

Maui tourists gone (mildly) wild

Proving that a man on a Maui vacation armed with a Flip Video and a You Tube account is an formidable cinemagraphic force, here are the final four videos in my 2008 Hawaiian Island oeuvre.

These follow my preceding works of tourist art: "Maui beach people: beautiful or not?", "Video tour of Kapalua zipline course" and "Having a whale of a good time on a Maui cruise."

Serious students of Flip Videography (assuming there are any) may notice an evolution in my style during our ten days on Maui. Myself, I can't. But often an artist can't recognize his own genius.

In "Maui's Lahaina Stables sunset ride" I explore the island's yin and yang: marvelous natural beauty coupled with increasingly annoying over-development. On my horse I walk (and jerkily trot) up to the lower reaches of a mystical West Maui mountain valley, pondering what Shangri La lies beyond our two-hour ride's reaches.

Shifting gears, a lot, to "Maui shopping in Wailea," I document my humble husbandly shopping demeanor: five steps behind Laurel, who rules the store browsing roost. My camera lingers on a shapely black-clad shopper (or more likely, store employee) who I would have followed more closely if not for a fear of "Security! I'm being stalked!"

"Snorkeling on Maui" actually is my wife's video creation. It features no narration, mostly because it isn't possible to talk with a snorkel in your mouth. This was filmed with the Flip Video underwater case. Laurel used no artificial fish food aids in filming her snorkeling on Napili and Kapalua Bays. Hence, the natural number of fish.

My final video, "Maui's Banyan Tree and Napili Bay," melds a stroll under a notable Lahaina attraction and a view of one of Maui's most beautiful beaches. The viewer is treated to a massive display of bird chirping at dusk and a cogent explanation of how we have managed to do a lot of Maui moving while vacationing on the same beach for 20 years.

Having a whale of a good time on a Maui cruise

What is it about whales? And screaming people. I had plenty of time to ponder this question on the sunset dinner cruise that left yesterday from Maui's Lahaina harbor.

As memorialized in my You Tube video, you can hear our fellow passengers (and me) getting super-excited when some whales appeared close to the Pacific Whale Foundation boat.

Elvis and the Beatles probably didn't get more "oohs" and "ahs" when they came on stage. Yes, there's something about whales.

My philosophical self likes this notion: whales are like God. Mysterious, powerful, unseen. Usually hidden beneath the surface, once in a while one reveals itself and Wow! – the crowd goes wild. Praise whale!

There was even some magical thinking going on with the captain, who you can hear me chatting with. I asked her how we could get some tricks out of the whales, since a whole lot of dramatic breaching wasn't going on.

She told me that in her sixteen years of experience, the best way to see whales is to turn your camera off.

Actually, I'd been wondering the same thing, having just filmed many minutes of open ocean, interspersed with a few whale sightings. (My video has been edited to show the best ones.) But I resisted the temptation to turn off my Flip Video.

And just a few seconds after the captain spoke, bingo, the whale breached big time. So much for magical thinking.

Aside from the whales, another exciting image on the video shows me sipping my very first Mai Tai. The expression on my face is partly staged, but mostly real – because it took me a while to realize that I was supposed to stir the drink up.

All the alcohol must have been sitting on the top, because at first it seemed like a killer Mai Tai (not that I'd know, really, since this was my first). Guess this is one of those things experienced drinkers learn on the job.

We also got a kick out of the wedding party, who you'll see sitting on the bow area in front of us. The bride wore a formal white dress on her Maui sunset dinner cruise. Cool. She certainly stood out among the shorts and t-shirt crowd.

This Pacific Whale Foundation cruise gets a thumbs up from us. It's vegetarian friendly, featuring pasta and a tofu stir fry for entrees, plus the usual veggie appetizers.

The music man was friendly and competent, though we could have done with fewer of his corny jokes during the whale sightings. Some silence might have been more appropriate when the divinities of the deep paid us a visit.

Video tour of Kapalua zipline course

Any mildly-extreme sport that starts and ends at an expresso bar is right up our alley. That's one reason we enjoyed yesterday's outing at the Kapalua Resort's zipline adventure on Maui so much.

But naturally zipping was the main attraction. We'd never zipped before. If you don't know what it is, my four minute video will show you.

It's a kick. You hang on harnesses attached to what we were assured is a super-strong cable. Then you let yourself go from a platform and zip – the longest of the four courses being over 2000 feet.

In the video I only show two of the ziplines, the short practice course and the longest ending course, which soars over a beautiful valley.

After three zips, I felt experienced enough to hold my Flip Video camera in one hand for almost all of the last course. But when you near the landing platform zippers are supposed to hold on to a bar with two hands; hence, the sudden shot of the sky. (I broke the rule at the very end.)

Kapalua has parallel lines, so two people zip at the same time. On the last course I was paired with Amy, who was zipping as part of her training to work at the Kapalua Adventure Center.

Not surprisingly, she zipped way faster than I did. About halfway down I thought about leaning back (less air resistance) to see if I could catch up, but then I realized that given how much we were paying per second of zipping, I should be going as slow as possible to stretch out the experience.

Not as slow as Laurel, though. She was zipping so sedately at the end of the last course she stopped 20 feet from the platform. A rope was thrown to her so she could be towed in.

We were fortunate to just be one of three tourists on our zipline adventure, the other three zippers being staff in training. Rob, from North Carolina via New Zealand, was the other tourista. He's thinking of moving to Ashland, Oregon – an excellent idea, we told him.

This is a fun 2 ½ to 3 hour escapade for those who are (1) moderately adventurous and (2) moderately physically fit. The zipline course requires pretty good balance – not when you're zipping, but while you're on a ladder getting unhooked from the equipment.

I suspect the first practice tower is designed to weed out the excessively infirm right at the start. You walk up a swaying hanging board/rope bridge, then have to navigate some steep stairs while hanging onto your zipline gear.

It's not a big deal for most people. But I wonder why Kapalua doesn't assess the fitness of potential zippers before they get fitted into a harness and take a twenty-minute ride up to the Mountain Outpost.

Maybe the staff figure that if you want to slide on a cable for thousands of feet over a deep Maui valley, you're fit enough to do it.

Messages to Maui’ans from an Oregon vacationer

Ah, the World Wide Web is wonderful. It lets me communicate, potentially at least, with some people on Maui that I have messages for.

--To the couple in the room next door: It was so nice to get to know you early this morning – through the loud cell phone conversations on your deck. I hope your mother is able to join you on Maui. Paying for her lodging if she springs for the airline ticket sounds fair. And good luck with finding a babysitter through the nanny hotline. Hopefully she'll keep your child quieter than you've been able to.

--To everyone else staying in our section of the resort: Are we the only ones who can read the resort rules? Which mentions quiet time from 10:30 pm to 8:00 am. And no cell phone conversations outside rooms. I realize that it's tough to keep kids quiet in Hawaii (or anywhere), but letting them outside at 6:30 am seriously interferes with my Maui mellow, which is heavily dependent on much sleeping and napping.

--To Maui residents: If you keep allowing condos and high rises to be built, eventually you're going to have zero natural island and 100% artificial ugliness. Like almost everywhere, including Oregon, I'm sure your local elected officials love property taxes and over-building. They're not going to stop this Maui madness on their own. You've got to vote them out before it's too late. Really. I've been coming here for over twenty years, and you're losing the reasons both locals and vacationers like us love this island.

--To restaurant owners: Here's a tip for generating increased profits. Have at least one decent vegetarian entrée on your menu. Lots of people are trying to eat healthier now. Plus, there are many steadfast vegetarians. But you wouldn't know it from the meat and seafood fare (and nothing else) that we see on your dinner menu before we walk away and take our credit card elsewhere.

--To a couple of beach goers: Guy #1, cigarettes don't disappear when they're snuffed out in the sand. Filters don't disintegrate. Kids will find them when they play in what their parents thought was pristine beach sand, until little Johnny cries out with a butt in his mouth, "Mommy, look what I found!" Guy #2, you're too obvious. Drinking coke after coke, then walking into the ocean up to your waist for just a minute before getting back on your towel – that's a pee-giveway. Be more subtle. My wife got creeped out and had to walk way down the beach before getting in the water.

--To the turtle botherers: How would you like it if someone followed you home and waited outside until you left, and they could start stalking you again? Sea turtles were here first. Tourists came later. Know your place. Diving down and peering into a turtle's rock crevice refuge after it surfaces to breathe isn't cool. It's tourist-dorky. Watch them from a generous distance. If they want to come see you, they will. (Bet: they won't.)

--To the babes in bikinis: Thank you.

Maui beach people: beautiful or not?

Wanting to make our Maui vacation intellectually productive (to a minimal degree), this morning I dedicated myself to a study of people passing by us on Napili Beach.

I say at the beginning that I'm going to film ten consecutive beach walkers, but my study was so interesting, I kept on going.

Hypothesis: Maui beachgoers are beautiful people.
Reality: watch my You Tube video (embedded below).

Now, I hasten to add a politically correct statement: We are all beautiful people in our own way.

That said, some are more beautiful than others. A careful viewer of the video will note that only one subject is featured twice, coming and going. For obvious reasons.

Actually, it's my wife's fault that this happened. She said to me, "Be sure to get a video of her; she's one of the few really good-looking people on the beach."

I told Laurel, "I think I already have her." But, better safe than sorry. And I just loved her yellow visor (which I have to admit, for some reason I didn't notice the first two times around).

The last guy in the video seemed to be posing for the camera. What a jerk. He reminded me of someone I know really well.

Another You Tube video shows  Napili Bay on a high surf day that, sadly, is far removed from the current glassy conditions. My boogie board is gathering dust (and sand).

But my video camera isn't. Here's my research.

Smith Rock scenic September hike

Rock climbers, in my opinion, are certifiably crazy. Which is why I admire them so much. And a big part of what made today's hike around a 4-mile loop in central Oregon's Smith Rock State Park so enjoyable.

Here's three climbers on the aptly named Monkey Face formation, which looks most monkeyish from this perspective on the Mesa Verde Trail. One climber (with red pants) is standing in the mouth.

To get there we hiked a couple of mostly flat miles on the River Trail. A short ways from the parking lot you already feel like you're on a Western movie set (in fact, "Rooster Cogburn" was filmed here).

The trail follows the also aptly named Crooked River.

To take the loop you head off uphill on the Mesa Verde Trail. Before too long the scenery is worth the panting (and it was just in the mid-60s today; if it's much hotter be sure to take a lot more water than the one bottle I carried with me).

Mesa Verde merges with the even more aptly named Misery Ridge Trail. After some heart-pounding switchbacks we ended up on the other side of Monkey Face, where no monkey is visible.

(Note to Bill Sullivan, author of "100 Hikes in the Central Oregon Cascades": We love your hiking books. But dude, if your Smith Rock loop is "moderate," I'd hate to see what an "extreme" hike is like. My wife and I are in good shape, but the Misery Ridge Trail deserves its name. Even on a cool day.)

This must be the "red pants" climber heading somewhere out of the mouth of Monkey Face.

Near the top of the Misery Ridge trail I turned around, sat down on a blessedly comfortable rock shaped a lot like a chair, and left my out-of-breath misery behind with this view.

Black Butte, coyly peeking through the Monkey Face formation.

Laurel and Serena, pooped out at the top of the Misery Ridge Trail.

We'd made it higher than the top of Monkey Face. That's Mt. Jefferson in the background (I'm pretty sure).

Heading down the other side of the ridge, more vistas.

I decided to try some freestyle climbing. Hey, there's nothing to it!

Especially when you're just five feet or so above the trail.

Alder Springs – hike to a Central Oregon oasis

First bit of Oregon hiking advice: buy the 2007 edition of William Sullivan's "100 Hikes in the Central Oregon Cascades." We had the first edition. The $16.95 I forked over last Sunday for the third edition at the Paulina Springs Book Company was money well spent.

Because it has a dozen new hikes and other fresh features. Which gets me to my second bit of advice: turn to page 82 and follow the directions to the start of the Alder Springs trail.

If you don't yet have the book, here's Sullivan's instructions.

To find the trailhead from downtown Sisters, take Highway 20 east to the far edge of town and fork left towards Redmond on Highway 126 for 4.6 miles. Then turn left on Goodrich Road for 8.1 paved miles. Along the way the road zigzags and changes name, but keep going. When you reach a marker for milestone 7, turn left on gravel road 6360 and pass through a green gate. Follow this one-lane track 4.1 miles, turn right at an "Alder Springs" pointer, and take a rough gravel road 0.8 mile to a parking turnaround at road's end.

Here's the view from the parking area. That's our dog, Serena, not a skulking coyote.

The beginning of the 3.6 mile round trip to Alder Springs (it's 6.2 miles to the Deschutes and back, which we journeyed) tells you you're in the high desert.

Before too long there's a glimpse of Whychus Creek. Used to be called Squaw Creek until political correctness got the name changed in 2005.

Descending toward the creek I thought I could see an Indian on the skyline. Or maybe it was a flashback from all the Westerns I watched in my boyhood.

Alder Springs truly is an oasis. Temperature was just in the high 70s the day we hiked the trail. If it was 90, you'd really consider it an oasis.

Our dog surely did. Here she is in Whychus Creek.

There's a board that tells about the springs, which bubble up 40 miles from snowmelt.

I loved the contrast between the rocky desert look and the green oasis'y look.

If you wade across the shallow water, you can continue on downcreek 1.6 miles until it runs into the Deschutes River. This is on the way, looking back toward Alder Springs.

The trail is lush in places, even in late August.

More rock/green contrasts.

The end of the trail is a great Deschutes watching/resting spot.

A dog/human photo op.

Water was a bit too cold to jump in completely. But I baptized myself, wearing my newly purchased (in Sisters) "Desert Mystic" t-shirt, appropriately enough.

I caught a tender moment between Laurel and Serena.

And a posed photo. Where, Praise Dog!, Serena's ears are actually (and rarely) standing up. She looks like more than the 50% German Shepherd that she is.

I carted along my GPS receiver. Total trip: 6.16 miles. Moving time: 2 hrs 32 min. Moving average: 2.4 mph. Stopped time: 1 hr 00 min. Total ascent: 1112 feet (felt like more, when we were in the sun). Maximum elevation: 2615 feet.

We stopped a lot for various reasons.

A sign-in sheet at the trailhead had frequent mentions of "saw rattlesnake," "saw big rattlesnake," and such. Whenever Serena seemed overly interested in a pile of rocks quite a ways from the trail we paused and whistled for her. Wasn't interested in carrying a 70 pound dog with a snakebite back to the car.

I also stopped to take lots of photos. But one of the biggest contributions to our stopped time (aside from the Deschutes River resting) was Laurel's frequent scanning of mountainsides for cougars. She's absolutely determined to see one, though it's unlikely that we ever will.

And I'm not even sure that this was cougar country. Regardless, it was beautiful Central Oregon country.

The road to the trail head is passable with any sort of car. It's bumpy, but not at all outrageous. So try the Alder Creek hike if you're in the area. You'll like it.

Canyon Creek Meadows trail still beautiful after forest fire

After the B and B Complex fire ravaged the area, we avoided central Oregon's Canyon Creek Meadows trail. We figured it'd be too depressing to walk through burnt trees. Today we were proven wrong,

Even back in 2005, just two years after the summer of 2003 fire, William (Bill) Sullivan and other lovers of this area said that that it still had "corners of wonder."

Well, I'm about to show you that this is an understatement in 2007. There are whole boulevards of wonder – including the burned areas.

Directions to the trail head are online and in various hiking books, including Sullivan's guide to the Central Oregon Cascades. It starts from the Jack Lake parking area. The road to Jack Lake is passable with any sort of vehicle. Just be ready for some teeth-rattling washboarding.

Have $5 to plunk into a box if you don't have an annual National Forest Trail Pass. We were pleased to pay. The hike is priceless. And the outhouse at the parking lot was spanking clean. Odor-free even.

The Canyon Creek Meadows trail starts off from the right side of the parking lot. Right away you know you're entering a burned area.

We didn't see any wildlife during our almost six mile hike. No deer. Not even any birds. But I guess this curious chipmunk qualifies. Our dog loves to chase little critters. He seemed to be taunting her.

Regrowth is well under way without any help from humans. Which is how the aftermath of all wildfires should be handled, in our opinion. Nature knows what it's doing. Logging and seeding aren't necessary. (This is in the Jefferson Wilderness Area, so it wouldn't be permitted anyway).

Witness this area. A profusion of young trees.

Because the area is so heavily hiked, you're requested to use a clockwise one-way loop system. On the outbound loop there's a convenient dog rest area about half way along. Handy in the summer heat.

After some ups and downs we were rewarded with a gorgeous view of Three Fingered Jack. The mountain always makes me think "Mordor." Yet without the evil. A bit sinister looking, though.

Here I am in the lower meadow. Some late July snow is beside my left ear.

Here's Laurel and Serena, the chipmunk chasing dog, on a bridge in the lower meadow. Mordor, oops, Three Fingered Jack, looms behind them.

Wildflowers are still in full bloom well into the summer up this high (around 5,500 feet).

Oh, yeah. They're blooming.

We decided to continue on to the upper meadow. It's about .7 of a mile. Fairly steep in places.

But the view of Three Fingered Jack along the way is worth it.

Along with the view from the rim of the upper meadow once we staggered our way to a lunch-eating rock.

This was the closest we got to Three Fingered Jack. Beautiful.

Heading back down the trail we got a great overview of the B and B Complex burned acreage. Which was disturbingly large. The Canyon Creek Meadows area, fortunately, is an oasis of green.

On the return loop the trail follows Canyon Creek for quite a ways. It also passes over some small creeks, like this mossy gem.

Here's a bunch of logs that have fallen across Canyon Creek. Reminds me of playing with Tinker Toys.

There's beauty in the burned areas also. My Tai Chi instructor's wife is Japanese. Warren said that when her relatives came to visit and saw burned areas along Highway 20, they took lots of photos and said "How beautiful." Yes.

I kept seeing the play of yin and yang as I walked along. White and black. Life and death. Devastation and regrowth.

I don't know much about burls. But these sure are burly, whatever caused them.

One benefit of the fire, for hikers, is the much more open views you have along the trail. Mt. Jefferson would have been barely visible, if at all, before the fire. Now, it says "Hi" to passers by.

We got plenty dusty on the hike. Jack Lake was impossible to pass up at the end of the trail.

Bottom line: don't pass up a chance to hike the Canyon Creek Meadows trail. The burned areas make it more interesting, not less. Beauty still is evident every step of the way.

Today, Suttle Lake beauty trumps politics

Come November, vote Democratic. And if you’re in Oregon, vote “no” on every Oregon ballot measure.
[Update: Oops. When I impulsively wrote the above I'd forgotten about Measure 44, which expands the Oregon Prescription Drug Program. It deserves a "yes." Otherwise, I still advise "no" on the other measures. See my post, "I copy Laurel's ballot. Are we lawbreakers?"]

There. I’m done my minimal progressive duty and am done with politics for this blogging day. I’ll turn to photos of our recent walk around central Oregon’s Suttle Lake, a much more pleasant manifestation of physical reality.

The big fire a couple of years ago has left whitening snags around the shoreline. Black Butte peeks over the treetops.

From another angle, and zoomed in, Black Butte becomes more of a presence. The fire lookout on the top of the mountain is just barely visible.

Laurel has a talent for matching, wherever she goes. Here she’s blending in with the fall color of the vine maples and Suttle Lake’s blue. (Her not-so-fashionable “necklace” is a dog whistle).

Speaking of Serena, the wonder pet, this is a study of Suttle Lake sunlight and shade featuring her and Laurel.

More vine maples. They weren’t quite as vibrant this October as last, perhaps due to the dry summer and fall.

Ah, we’ve got such an environmentally conscious dog. With just a smidgen of coaxing (well, maybe a bit more than that) Laurel got Serena to retrieve a plastic bottle floating ten feet or so off shore. She tried her best, but the bottle must have gotten attached to some fishing line or something. Still, we’ll be nominating her for Green Anti-Litter Dog of the Year.

This is my favorite photo from our walk. Dog on a dock, contemplating…something. For sure, a different order of reality from Saxton vs. Kulongoski and Republicans vs. Democrats. Without getting too philosophical, I'll still call it a more real reality.

Black Butte Ranch Restaurant: We love you, but…

Sometimes tough love is needed. Straight talk. Telling it like it is. Black Butte Ranch Restaurant, my friend, you’ve got to get your serving-time act together. Plus, what you serve has got to include a decent vegetarian entrée.

Two “got to’s.” Not much to ask. You can handle it. Then we’ll keep coming back. We love looking out your floor to ceiling windows at snow-capped mountains, a meadow, grazing horses, geese on the pond. The atmosphere can’t be beat.

But no matter how beautiful the setting, diners get cranky when they wait half an hour to have their order taken, wait another half an hour to get two basic dinner salads, and then, a full hour and a half after sitting down at their table, are served an unappealing vegetarian dish that would have brought a smile to Bugs Bunny. But not to us.

Yes, I did tell our waiter to go heavy on the vegetables and light on the pasta. However, it looked like the chef poured a pail of cut cooked carrots over some linguine, added a dash of broccoli and mushrooms, and called it an entrée.

If either Laurel or me was afraid of orange, we’d have run screaming for the exit when the plates were put down. It was an awesome sight. To rabbits.

Look: I’ve been a vegetarian for thirty-seven years. It’s common for me to walk into a classy restaurant like yours, open up the menu, and see there isn’t a single entrée that didn’t once walk, fly, or swim.

No problem. I just plead my case before the waiter. “Hey, we’re vegetarians. We don’t eat meat or fish. Could the chef make us something special? Doesn’t need to be fancy. Just put together some grilled vegetables, rice or pasta, maybe some other side dishes from your menu?”

This usually works like a charm. In fact, at the very Black Butte Restaurant where we dined last night, over the years my wife and I have enjoyed the creativity that’s emerged from the kitchen in response to our vegetarian pleadings.

But last night we got off to an inauspicious beginning when the waiter looked at us with a deer-in-the-headlights stare when I went into my “Hey, we’re vegetarians” rap. Right away he tried to buy us off with a veggie appetizer, but we pressed for a real entrée.

Should have stuck with the appetizer, in retrospect. After a few bites, Laurel’s reaction was “I could have made something better than this back at the cabin.” She was right. And while I’ve got tremendous respect for my wife’s cooking skills, she’d be the first to admit that they are nowhere near chef-quality. So you’ve got a problem here.

We asked for something vegetarian. I can understand that requesting a kosher, gluten-free, macrobiotic, low-carb dinner might throw the kitchen for a loop. But vegetarian? That should be easy.

You never know when you might get a Hollywood star dining at Black Butte. Get the chef to think ahead, figure out a tasty dish that can be assembled from the ingredients you always have on hand, pin the recipe on a kitchen bulletin board, and have at it when a restaurant customer says that he or she is a vegetarian.

Better yet, make it your policy to always have a vegetarian entrée on the dinner menu. You might be surprised to discover how many people order it. I praised your grilled tofu Garden Plate three years ago but you changed the menu soon after to be entirely meaty and fishy, like it is now.

Big mistake, which you need to rectify if you want to stay on the good side of the Vegetarian Gods.

And us. Who also have some advice about how to handle over-taxed restaurant situations, like you experienced last night. Waiters and busboys were rushing around like crazy. Yet food took a very long time to arrive. We saw other diners frowning as they wrote on the comment card that accompanied the check, just as we did.

Restaurants, like people, have bad nights. We understand that. Your parking lot was full when we drove up. It looked like a party or reception of some sort was going on in your banquet area. Maybe that over-burdened your kitchen. Maybe a cook was sick. Maybe you were short-staffed otherwise (our waiter looked like a busboy given a temporary promotion).

Regardless, be upfront about it. If someone had said to us, “I’m sorry about how long you’ve had to wait. We’re not living up to our service standard. The reason is _______. We want to give you each of you a complimentary glass of wine in appreciation of your patience,” that would have smothered a lot of the frustrated fumes that were rising from our hungry heads.

But we never got anything but a brisk “Sorry for the delay” as our salads were dropped on our table an hour after we sat down. Even worse, we weren’t asked if we wanted ground pepper! I, horror of horrors!, had to use the regular pepper shaker rather than enjoy the ritual of the three-foot-long grinder being wielded above my (tasty) Lodge Salad.

Leisurely meals at a fine restaurant like yours can be enjoyable. However, the diners need to feel like they’re largely in control of the pace of the meal. We did a lot of unwanted lingering last night, made more unwantable by the fact of it being my birthday dinner.

Hey, I had presents to unwrap back at the cabin, some of which I hadn’t bought for myself, so I was curious to find out what they were. We both had better things to do than stare blankly around the dining room in a low-blood-sugar stupor, vaguely pondering why the people who were the most overweight and looked like heart attacks waiting to happen were the ones who ordered a thick steak.

We still love you, Black Butte Restaurant. We just hope you’re open to becoming ever more deserving of our adoration. Learn how to minimize long waits. And have your chef come up with a good vegetarian entrée.

With just a few carrots. Please.

I go to Hollywood and eat lunch with Kirsten Dunst

Really. I did. For the whole meal we were just a few feet apart. I was sitting at the very M Café table shown in this photo. On the near end, next to the window. My new best friend, Kirsten, she of “Spider-Man” fame, was eating by herself at an outside table right behind the glass.

So our relationship has some room to grow. Like, we could be in the same room. And meet each other. But, hey, this was a good start.

Last weekend Laurel and I visited my daughter Celeste, her husband Patrick, and fabulously spoiled cats Cici and Smokey. After picking us up at the Burbank airport, Celeste showed us around their recently-purchased (and revamped) Hollywood home, looking slim and stylish as always.

My celebrity-seeing karma was even better this trip than last, when we ran into Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake. As we walked into the 101 Coffee Shop yesterday to eat breakfast, Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy were on their way out.

And on Saturday night, at the opening of a photographer’s show at a Santa Monica art gallery, Laurel and I were introduced to Annabeth Gish of Showtime’s “Brotherhood.” This time I actually shook hands and chatted with a celebrity. (She and Celeste share a yoga class).

What’s great about the Hollywood area, though, is that so many people look like celebrities, even if they aren’t one. Take Patrick, for example. He should be in the movies. Definitely. He already dresses the part. (Love the t-shirt, baby).

The four of us went for a walk in the Hollywood Hills—a different (and less steep) path than last year’s out-of-breath trek. Celeste acquitted herself admirably. I had to prod her into acting more tired than she was as she and Patrick posed in front of the mostly hidden “Hollywood” sign.

Naturally the fit older folks cruised up the hill without any problem at all.

I got to make another pilgrimage to the Bodhi Tree bookstore, a must-see for anyone who wants to browse the best collection of spiritual, mystical, new age, and religious books I’ve ever come across. Fittingly, the next block down is lined with marvelous trees.

Our last stop before heading to the airport yesterday afternoon was the Paul Smith store on Melrose Avenue. Patrick is the manager. It’s tres hip. And colorful.

Flying into nearby Burbank as we did, I was worried that we’d miss the classic LA experience: a freeway traffic jam. Fortunately, the drive to Santa Monica was just slow enough to fulfill me, without being a full-blown nightmare.

Leaving aside the freeways, there’s a lot for organic Oregonians such as us to like about the Hollywood area. We ate great. The 101 Coffee Shop looks exactly like its name. But the food, while coffee shop priced, is way above typical. Health-minded vegetarians can thrive there.

As they can at the macrobiotic M Café. The menu is typical of what we found whenever we sat down to eat at one of the restaurants Celeste and Patrick took us to (they’re a true Hollywood couple; they mostly eat out rather than cook).

Salem, get with it. I don’t expect to sit down with Kirsten Dunst every time I eat lunch. But it sure would be nice to have food like this to choose from. (Yeah, I know, Eugeneians and Portlandians; I should move an hour north or south).

21. Madras Tempeh Wrap 10.25 masala-baked tempeh, brown basmati rice, toasted almonds, raisins, frizzled onions & crisp vegetables with curried soy yogurt dressing in a whole wheat lavosh

Simple pleasures on the Metolius

This is the title of an article in the August 2006 issue of Sunset magazine. Read it. If you’ve never been to central Oregon’s Metolius River, it’ll make you want to go. If you’re there already, like we are, it’ll help explain the smile on your face.

Not that smiles need explanation. And not that every moment on the Metolius is pleasurable.

Take, for example, simply standing in the 48 degree water. The air was 90 degrees when Laurel did that this afternoon, on a hike downriver from the Wizard Falls fish hatchery. Yet a few seconds after I took this photo, she wasn’t standing there anymore.

Serena enjoys the water a lot more. Might have something to do with being half-Lab. And being covered with fur.

You can fly fish from the banks. Most fisherpeople don’t. They wade right in. Not knowing much about fly fishing, I don’t know why. It’s sort of a mystery to me why people catch fish just to let them go. It’s not a mystery why they come to the Metolius.

A solitary discarded shoe. It could tell a story, I’m sure. But probably not a very interesting one.

Clear calm cold water. If I were a trout, I’d love this place. Which they do, I’m told.

On both sides of the river there’s a stretch of private property that the trail skirts, going up and away from the water. Some basic shelters face a meadow. Like the article says, simple pleasures.

On the “up and away” part of the hike we came to a tree threesome: one dead, two alive. I pictured one of the standing trees saying to the other, “Honey, for some reason I don’t feel as close to you anymore.”

I prefer to walk along the river. But there’s a forest charm to the detour around the private land.

The Metolius, meandering.

Here’s how a true Stoic stands in the Metolius. However, following in Laurel’s frigid footsteps, I have to admit that it wasn’t for long.

Metolius 4th of July

So here we are at our cabin on fireworks-free Metolius national forest land, carefully scheduling our visit so our loud-noise-phobic dog will escape the trauma of hearing booms and pops, and the early evening thunder has been enormous the past few days.

Serena has spent a lot of time trembling inside closets, defying her name.

There’s some profound philosophical message in this, but the 4th of July isn’t the time for deep thoughts. We spent most of the day walking around, enjoying the special character of this holiday on the Metolius River.

Some cabins are decorated patriotically.

There were low-key parties under the Ponderosas.

The parade down (and up) the river was something to quack about.

This float was pretty cool.

I saw an eagle and its young in these natural sculptures. Don't you?

This isn’t dog abuse. Laurel was trying to get Serena's ears raised, because she always pins them back when a photo is taken.

We sure didn’t have to deal with any crowds today.

Oh yeah, you can do some serious relaxing here.

You want purple and mountain majesties? The upper Metolius has it. USA! USA!

Spring on the Metolius

Yes, it’s one day away from being summer. But spring is in full bloom on the Metolius River in central Oregon, since warm weather arrives later in these parts. Here are some photos I took on a late afternoon walk along the Metolius’ upper stretches today.

For some reason I never get bored walking the dog while we’re in Camp Sherman.

Here’s a natural bridge over untroubled waters.

The wild roses look just like those at our Salem home, though in bloom much later.

Lounging on the Metolius, TV not needed.

Abstract wood sculpture. Artist: Nature.

Water pump and the only camper in the Riverside (walk-in) campground.

Wild flower.

Changing locale seven miles or so, and the day to yesterday, here’s me, Laurel, and our fellow Black Butte Ranch stables trail rider at Glaze Meadow with the Three Sisters watching over us. Laurel is a better rider than I am, but somehow my horse ended up in a better pose.

I’ve forgotten the other woman’s name. I remember she’s from Oakland, because that’s emblazoned on her t-shirt. She and I brought up the rear of our four horse posse (including the trail guide).

We had a great philosophical/metaphysical discussion for a good part of the two hour ride. This is the first time someone quoted Epictetus to me while on a horse. Well, also while not on a horse.

Congratulations to the Napili Bay sidestroke champion

Namely, me. One reason you don’t see a sidestroke trophy in this photo is that the fools in charge of swimming championships don’t consider the sidestroke to be a competitive stroke.

Another reason is that no one except me entered the sidestroke event that I’ve been taking part in the past nine days on Napili Bay here on Maui, perhaps because my mind is the only place it’s been publicized.

Regardless, I love the sidestroke. It’s a contact lens wearer’s dream because your face stays out of the water all of the time. And you can enjoy the scenery while you swim, rather than staring mostly at water.

Every day I swim thirty minutes back and forth across the bay. I’ve been doing this every time we’ve visited Maui, which is at least fifteen times. I don’t understand why the sidestroke hasn’t caught on more, given all the exposure it’s gotten from me.

I’m a picture of elegance, in my own mind at least. I always face toward the open sea, ready to deal with a tsunami or great white (more realistically, a snorkeler who isn’t looking where he’s going).

I’ve evolved a sidestroke medley routine: 20 sidestrokes, then 10 highly modified backstrokes (my hands don’t come out of the water and I use a frog kick). Repeated for the 30 minutes, through flat water and wavy water, calm winds and high winds. My sidestroke gets me anyway I want to go, so long as it is back and forth across Napili Bay.

So I can’t figure out why my beloved sidestroke gets pitifully little respect. This brief article is typical. It snidely says:

Why would anyone give serious attention to the sidestroke? It’s neither powerful nor particularly graceful (or fast). Sidestroke is not a competitive stroke so it's not useful for racing. Some may see it as a remnant of an earlier age of swimming, a kind of evolutionary anomaly, an archaic remain of swimming strokes long surpassed on the evolutionary chain.

Obviously the author hasn’t seen me swimming the sidestroke. I am a blend of grace, power, and speed. I’ve never seen a dolphin during my sidestroking, undoubtedly because they lurk just offshore gazing with awe upon a member of another species who rivals, if not surpasses, their swimming ability.

Today a girl wearing fins was swimming various strokes across Napili Bay at the same time I was. For a few minutes we were close enough together for me to gauge our relative speeds. During her butterfly strokes I’m pretty sure I was staying ahead of her. Only when she switched to a crawl did she start to slowly move past me. With fins, remember.

So I believe I’m justified in claiming the sidestroke championship of Napili Bay. I will call my title the Beckwith, in honor of Fred Beckwith, who in 1859 became the swimming champion of England using the overarm sidestroke.

Ah, those were the days.

Meaningless Maui musings

Hey, what do you expect from me after eight days on Maui? The big questions of life have been reduced to meaningless musings.

Can a woman match too perfectly? What you can’t see in this photo is the palm tree on Laurel’s cap that mirrors the palm tree on her t-shirt. And note how the innermost color of the shirt’s tree precisely echoes the color of her shorts. Muy matcho, senorita!

Isn’t “guys” a masculine term? Restaurant staff always say to us, “Hi, guys. How’re you doing? I’ll be your server today.” What if they said “Hi, gals” to Laurel and me? I’d be sort of offended. Why isn’t Laurel? Oh, almost forgot. Men rule the world. That’s why people are called “mankind.”

Along these lines, what non-genius thought up the “Old Guys Rule!” product line? Caps and t-shirts with this unappealing message are everywhere on Maui. I rush past the displays, looking the other way. Don’t want anyone to think that I consider myself such a beast. Haven’t seen a single person wearing this crap. Probably never will.

Generously-sized people in skimpy bathing suits glorifying the body God and McDonalds gave them, good or bad? Jury is still out on this question. More research to be conducted on the beach in a few minutes. Tentative answer: depends on number of rolls of body fat.

Since Buddha-nature made beards, why is there also snorkeling? The two are incompatible. Trust me, I know. I use goggles and a nose clip now instead of a mask. With my narrow face, water still leaks in. Here’s my inner snorkeling dialogue: “Where are the damn fish…shit, water in my goggles…hell, water in my snorkel…no fish anywhere…this sucks… should have stayed on my mat… shit, more water in…”

When Einstein said that time passes at varying rates for different observers, was he speaking of women and men shopping? I see an Aloha shirt. I look at the size: XL. I buy it. Total elapsed time: 90 seconds. Laurel shops for dichroic glass earrings. Time stands still. A few days ago I asked the saleslady if she had a cot and a blankie so I could take a nap while I was waiting for my wife to make up her mind. She didn’t. I slept standing up.

Why do visitors to Maui wear plain white t-shirts, just like they do at home? Guys, check out the bargain bins at the Front Street tourist emporiums. $4.99 for a colorful t-shirt. Sometimes $3.99. Spend a few bucks and brighten up the beach. Just remember to match.

What weird trick of the mind leads a 57 year old man to spend a full hour staring out to sea, trying to remember the name of the third Wonder Pet? I came up with Tuck and Ming-Ming just fine. Linny escaped me. Considered running up to one of the many preschoolers on the beach and asking, but I was determined to come up with the name myself. Finally did. Around dinnertime.

Another productive Maui day.

Strolling to the Ritz, Maui style

We just strolled to the Ritz. The Kapalua Ritz-Carlton on Maui. As you might expect, it’s, well, ritzy. Laurel heads up the Ritz-Carlton way on her usual morning walk. She had to miss today, so I went with her on an afternoon substitute outing.

We began at our Napili Bay condo. This is where I do my own exercising. Thirty minutes back and forth across the bay every day. Laurel’s a walker. When on Maui, I figure ocean swimming is the thing.

Laurel usually drives the short distance to Oneloa Bay. We did this afternoon also. Molokai is in the background.

It’s a surfer beach. Most of them were gone by the time we arrived. Got to follow a lithe bikini-clad female surfer up the path to the parking lot though. Good timing. Sorry, don’t have a photo.

Next stop, a hole on one of the Kapalua golf courses. Beautiful. Too bad I play such ugly golf. I’ve heard that the wind is so strong on the courses, sometimes the ball blows right back at you. Could be. Or maybe I was being kidded. Regardless, this is one windy side of the island.

Doesn’t stop people from staying at the Ritz-Carlton though. Maybe it’s the view that entices them.

We headed down the hotel’s pathway to the ocean. Per usual, Laurel was way ahead of me. Her “shopper’s walk” is much faster than mine. She’s put in a lot of training.

Maui guidebooks say that Fleming Beach Park is where you take your BBQ grill when you want it sandblasted. From previous visits I can believe it. Wasn’t horribly windy today, however. It’s a pretty nondescript beach. Decent boogie boarding but not that inviting.

The Ritz-Carlton main entrance is.

The grounds are full of flowers. Like this red don’t-know-the-name.

From the Ritz we headed up the hill to the Honolua Store. It’s got that old time Hawaii feel to it.

On the outside, at least. Inside, Laurel avidly browsed through a pile of t-shirts that, for the life of me, looked almost exactly like the one she had on. Female shopping has its own logic to it, I’ve learned.

These, Laurel tells me, are Norfolk pines. If they’re not, blame her. They’re the Napili trademark. I believe they were planted by sailors in the 1800s who needed straight wood for masts and such. Kind of incongruous for Hawaii, but reminded me of Oregon.

And that was our stroll. Got back to the car too late to finish up with a sunset photo. You can interpolate one from my previous post.

Lastly, if you’re the praying sort, pray for bigger waves on Napili Bay. My boogie board is gathering dust. Or rather, sand.

From maddening to Maui in eight hours

Aren’t vacations fun? You spend a week running around like crazy, getting ready to spend a week relaxing. Then when you get home, you spend another frantic week catching up on everything that didn’t get done while you were on vacation.

Sometimes vacations seem like a net relaxation loss to Laurel and me. But that doesn’t stop us from meandering off to Maui most every year. As we did yesterday.

After a semi-sleepless night spent worrying about what we’d forgotten to pack, we headed up to the Portland airport at the not so jolly time of 6:45 am. With terrific timing, this got us to I-205 just when everybody in the metro area was driving off to work. We got to follow them for quite a few dreadfully maddening snails-pace freeway miles.

How do you stand it, Portlanders? If you do this every day, why aren’t you as crazy as Los Angeles commuters? Judging by the behavior of our fellow I-205ers, you probably are. Nonetheless, we made it to the Hawaiian Airlines ticket counter with time to spare. Which I promptly spent at my traditional first vacation stop, the airport Powell’s Books.

Then, on to Maui. After waiting an eternity for a National Car Rental pickup, I found Laurel and our bags waiting at curbside. Already missing our dog, she was thrilled that a drug-sniffing Beagle had given our checked luggage some close attention as it came off the carousel. For some reason she said that the dog seemed most interested in my boogie board.

Sorry, my canine friend, you were about thirty-seven years too late.

After making our obligatory stop at the Kahului natural food store to stock up on organic vegetarian supplies for our Napili Shores condo and enrich the local economy with legal green stuff, for the second time in a day we got to spend a lot of time staring at the rear bumper of cars slowly creeping along the highway.

Except now the highway bordered the warm Pacific, rather than southeast Portland. Big difference. Still, when you’ve just sat on an airplane for almost six hours, it isn’t much fun to crawl bumper to bumper into Lahaina.

How do you stand it, West Maui locals? Don’t you sometimes feel like kicking every tourist off of your island so you could drive faster than 20 mph? I did yesterday, conveniently forgetting that I was one of the potential kickees.

Once we set foot on the beach, however, all of the day’s maddening moments were forgotten. Here'e Laurel enjoying the powerful amnesiac effects of yesterday’s Maui sunset.

Today’s wasn't too shabby either.

It isn’t 100% paradise here, though. This afternoon I went to Napili Beach by myself while Laurel was shopping. I settled down on my mat for some reading, swimming, and people watching.

The people watching, a.k.a. (for me) babe watching, isn’t so hot on Napili Bay this time of year. Mostly out of shape family types and older folks. So when I saw a youngish guy and his shapely thong-clad girlfriend walking toward my end of the beach I channeled all of my psychic energies into a silent plea of “Sit down…here.”

And they did! Just ten feet or so to my left. There is a God. Albeit one with a sense of humor. For the guy laid down to the right of the girl.

Which meant that between me and the girl’s eminently attractive bikini-clad breasts was the guy’s head. And when they rolled over, between me and the girl’s eminently attractive thong-clad butt was the guy’s own unappealing rear end.

Trouble in paradise. I had to keep subtly shifting around quite a bit to improve my babe-watching angles, burning up calories that I had planned to spend bobbing around on my boogie board.

Well, you probably aren’t feeling sorry for me. But you should. It’s tough beaching it on Maui. Tomorrow I’ll be back hard at work on my mat. Say a “more thongs” prayer for me.

April beauty on the Metolius

Here are some images taken during our long late April weekend in Camp Sherman.

Every morning I ride my bike a mile to the Camp Sherman store to buy the Bend Bulletin. It costs me thirty-five cents. The view of Mt. Jefferson over the Metolius is priceless.

I pass this horse corral on one of my late afternoon dog walk routes. Black Butte is framed in the distance. I think this is called Johnson Meadow. It borders the head of the Metolius River, which springs full gush from volcanic fissures.

The dog and I walk back to our cabin along the river. I don’t fish, but I love the rustic fishing platforms along the Metolius. Kind of makes you want to walk the plank, except once you do, you’re in the coldest damn water you’ve ever felt.

Several miles downriver there's a cluster of non-functioning water wheels. In the old days of Camp Sherman they made electricity, or so I believe. I talked once with the owner of a water wheel equipped cabin but have forgotten most of what he told me.

Some of the cabins on leased forest service land are wonderfully charming, like this one. Ours is of the blander variety. And we don’t have a view of the river. Like I said before, poor us.

Here’s our stick happy dog, Serena, and Laurel on our downriver walk today. Black Butte rises in the background.

A close up of Black Butte from the same location. There’s still a lot of snow on top. Laurel just read me a story about how before the road was built more than halfway to the summit, the people who manned the fire lookout on the top of Black Butte regularly would walk the ten miles round trip from the lookout to the Camp Sherman store (3,400 foot elevation gain), sometimes returning after midnight. One guy made the return trip in a shade over 48 minutes. Wow!

I never get tired of watching the sun dance on the Metolius near the Camp Sherman store. This is one of the most beautiful rivers in the United States. Heck, even more: the world.

Yesterday on a trip into Sisters, about ten miles away, I was struck by how much new construction is going on. Given the view from town, I can understand why. These are two of the Three Sisters rising over Sisters.

Head of Jack Creek survives fire

The Head of Jack Creek near Camp Sherman is one of the prettiest places in central Oregon. Heck, anywhere. So even though we’d heard that the spring-fed source of Jack Creek had survived the B & B Complex fire, it was worrisome to see so many burned trees as we walked up from a nearby campground.

But when we got to the charming bridge that leads to the Head area, everything looked great.

These berries looked good enough to eat. We resisted the temptation, not knowing what they were.

There’s fire damage around the Head of Jack Creek and a few downed trees disturb previously pristine waters.

The good news is that the Head of Jack Creek is essentially undamaged and continues to lift the spirit. I had thought about writing a political sort of post today, yet that notion evaporated after our walk this afternoon.

The Head of Jack Creek is one of those places that make you realize that notwithstanding hurricanes, wars, global warming, deficit spending, and all the other bad stuff that grabs our attention, there’s another level of reality where everything always has been, and always will be, just fine.

Every time I go there I start to think, “This is like a Japanese garden.” Then I remind myself, “No, a Japanese garden is like this.” Man can try to copy nature, but there’s nothing like the original.

Silver Falls State Park, rediscovered

Here we are, living in Salem, just 40 minutes or so away from Silver Falls State Park, and it took relatives visiting from Indiana to get our butts up there. Thanks, Jerry and Dee, who are shown here in front of the South Falls along with Laurel (who is Dee’s sister).

This photo fulfills a promise to Jerry, who is making a career move after a lengthy stint as Indiana State Parks director.

Jerry told me that he had Googled himself to find out what a prospective employer would learn about him, and my “Images of Indiana” post, which included a dramatic photo of Jerry being strangled by a kudzu vine, popped up. So I assured Jerry that I’d balance that image of him with another more professional-appearing photo.

It was interesting to walk the Silver Falls trails with Jerry and hear him comment on what he saw from a park director’s viewpoint.

Mostly he had lots of good to say about Silver Falls State Park. But Jerry said that he wouldn’t have put in the metal pipe guardrail that shows in the photo above (wood would look better, though isn’t as long-lasting or sturdy). And this sign next to a parking area struck him (and me) as overly controlling and busy.

But these little things mean nothing compared to the great natural beauty of the park and the generally excellent facilities. We hadn’t been there for so long, I’d forgotten what a enjoyable hike the shorter loop from South Falls to Winter Falls is (about five miles).

The South Falls weren’t falling a lot, given the time of year and Oregon’s semi-drought. The view from behind the falls was still beautiful though.

Here’s the Lower South Falls.

And the Lower North Falls.

As if all this wasn’t enough reason to visit Silver Falls State Park, the snack bar in the lodge serves a fine cup of hot chocolate. I’d also forgotten the joy of hot chocolate after a five mile hike--had quite a few memories refreshed yesterday.

Golf’s essential insanity

Outwardly golfers can appear completely normal, but the very fact that they golf testifies to their underlying bizarreness. As evidence I submit this photo of Ron Morey (along with his wife, Rita) looking pleasantly normal enough during a bike ride at Black Butte Ranch last Tuesday.

Indeed, Ron is a wonderful guy. Laurel and I enjoyed the four days we just spent with Ron and Rita at our cabin in Camp Sherman. But this doesn’t negate the fact that Ron is an avid golfer, which means, ipso facto, that his mind works in mysterious ways, fully fathomable only to another member of his cult.

For example, during a phone conversation while he was still in Seattle he said that I should go golfing with him at one of the Black Butte Ranch courses. Ron knew that I hadn’t played golf for over ten years, leaving aside the whiffle balls that he and I hit at my home here in Salem a while back.

Yet somehow he thinks that it’s a fine idea for me to jump right onto a pretty tough golf course. I need to say that “tough,” to me, is defined much more in psychological than physical terms. That is, a tough course is any course where a considerable number of people would see me flailing away at the ball.

I knew that (1) Black Butte Ranch is a popular summer destination spot, (2) Many homes at the resort are situated next to the golf courses and, even worse, have large picture windows, and (3) Bike trails run adjacent to, or even through, the courses, thereby adding to the potential population that would be viewing my humiliation.

Nonetheless, Ron told me, “You just need to go out and hit some balls at the driving range. Then you’ll be fine when we play.” After more than ten years of not playing golf? It’s insane to think that I’d be “fine” after hitting a few buckets of balls.

This psychiatric conclusion was confirmed after I did indeed hit a bucket of balls at the South Salem driving range. I couldn’t believe that Ron had convinced me to go there, but I myself am open to golfing fantasies, having played this crazy game quite a bit in my high school days and episodically thereafter.

So with a decided sense of unreality I found myself at the driving range last week, teeing up a ball with 5-iron in hand. I took a few ungainly practice swings. I had no expectation that I could hit the ball with any semblance of golfing prowess. I stepped up to the tee, made my first swing, and “whack!”…the ball sails straight and far a mile down the range.

Hmmmm. “Beginner’s luck,” I said to myself. I teed up another ball. Whack! Again, straight and far another mile.

“Man, I’m a natural! I haven’t hit a golf ball for a decade and look at me! This game is easy! What’s the big deal with golf?! Bring it on!” With those delusional thoughts, my descent into driving range hell began.

My initial what-the-heck looseness changed into an I-can-do-even-better tightness. The more I tried to replicate those first few natural swings, the more my balls either dribbled down the grass or soared like slicing/hooking unmajestic eagles.

Needless to say, I ended up telling Ron to put himself down as a Big Meadow course single, not a twosome. I’m up with Buddhism and am fine with the ego-loss thing, but I’d rather have it happen gradually rather than all at once during a brief 18 holes.

Well, it wouldn’t have been all that brief, actually. That’s another crazy thing about golf. Ron had a 9:00 am tee time. He finished about 3:00. It took him six hours to hit a stupid ball just 88 times. That’s standing still and swinging your arms every four minutes, not exactly pushing your body to the limit.

But it was more than I was willing to do, so I was happy to hear Ron recount his golfing exploits. Most notably, a birdie on a 432 yard par 4 that resulted from a 195 yard 3-wood shot that landed two feet from the hole. (I heard about the shot so many times, I’ve committed the details to memory).

Ron felt bad that I hadn’t enjoyed a golfing experience, so he talked me into having one of my own. For some reason I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as he did. Guess I just felt teed off.

Our canine companion, Serena, had a good time making friends with his own “Big Dog” pal though.

And this morning I enjoyed getting back at Ron by razzing him for bundling up with a blanket and vest on August 18, for god’s sake, when it was already a balmy 64 degrees in Camp Sherman and heading for the 80’s. Ron obliged with his best dottering old man in the nursing home imitation.

Ron, amazingly generous guy that he is, gave me a golf ball emblazoned with the particulars of his consulting business, Profound Results. Now that I’ve advertised him on my blog, he probably will try to write off his entire trip to Oregon.

Hopefully the IRS doesn’t read weblogs. But after a previous visit to Black Butte Ranch, I learned that police do read weblogs.

Camp Sherman Independence Day parade

My vote for the nation’s most charming Independence Day parade goes to Camp Sherman’s 2005 bike trail event. This small central Oregon town is full of zany characters and beautiful scenery, both of which were on full display yesterday.

Laurel and I were riding our bicycles back to our cabin after attending the annual meeting of the Metolius River Forest Homeowners Association. Near the Lake Creek Lodge we encountered some paraders heading to the Community Hall that we had just left. They yelled, “Come join us!” We did, not wanting to pass up a parade.

When we got to the Hall this woman stressed that the parade was completely spontaneous, notwithstanding the evident care with which many of the participants had festooned themselves and their bicycles. She explained that plans for an official street parade had fallen through because of bureaucratic nit-picking, such as requiring a permit and what-not, so the Camp Shermanites decided to plan an unplanned parade on the bike trail.

Lo and behold, lots of people just happened to show up at the same time on July 2—red, white, and blued—kazoos in hand, ready to “sing” (using that term in its most generous sense) “You’re a Grand Old Flag” at the parade staging area. An award for creativity goes to this woman’s use of blue Superman trunks as part of her patriotic outfit.

This man is ready to roll: Stars and stripes headband, check. Kids corralled in wagon, check. Beer in hand, check.

His children looked to be the parade’s king and queen. I liked how even their snack bag matched the color theme.

With a certain lack of discipline befitting the spontaneous, unplanned nature of the parade (a feature of the event that the unorganized organizers kept speaking loudly about, apparently in case a county official was lurking in the woods), we headed out—the only stated rule being “Keep on the bike trail, not the road.”

Not surprisingly, the paraders vastly outnumbered the onlookers. Like, several dozen to two. But these walkers obviously appreciated the surprise of encountering an Independence Day parade on the Camp Sherman bike trail.

If any one needed proof that the parade was unplanned, they only needed to observe the smiling confusion that resulted from the parade leaders heading onto a narrow single-track trail that even Laurel and I, Camp Sherman part-timers that we are, knew couldn’t be traversed by wagon-hauling bicycles. Quickly recognizing this, the free-floating parade managed to turn around and get back on the wider main bike path.

Reaching the Camp Sherman store, Laurel watched the paraders disband. Not knowing about the parade beforehand (it was spontaneous, remember), we were woefully underdressed for the red, white, and blue occasion. Next year we’ll be prepared.

Though the parade was unplanned, somehow it managed to reach the store shortly before 5:00 pm, just when the Camp Sherman Independence Day barbeque and music festivities were scheduled to begin. Since the menu didn’t feature much in the way of vegetarian food, we rode back to our cabin, had some snacks, and then walked back to the store with the family pet about an hour and a half later.

Serena made some new friends. And, no, she isn’t snarling in this photo. Serene Serena doesn’t snarl. She smiles with her teeth.

Our Camp Sherman day ended with us listening to country music and watching some young dancers in the light.

May every day be a Camp Sherman day for you, wherever you live, filled with a sense of community, quirkiness, and conviviality.

Happy Fourth of July. Be Independent.

Trail rides turn tame

It’s Laurel’s birthday today. She’s not too old to go on a Black Butte Stables trail ride with her cowboy, and that’s all I’ll say about her age.

Except, Laurel looks a lot younger than her XX years. Also, those XX years haven’t brought her hugely proficient arithmetic skills, because up until a few weeks ago she thought that today she was going to be XX + 1. When I pointed out her math error, Laurel was greatly relieved. “All year I thought I was going to be XX + 1,” she said. “Wow! You’ve taken a year off of my life—but in a good way.”

I’m happy that I could give her the gift of a year-younger birthday. Otherwise, Laurel’s main material gift was something she picked out herself: the afore-blogged wolf painting. The trail ride counts as a day-before-birthday present, sort of. By “sort of,” I mean that the birthday cowgirl was in sort of a fussy mood when the photo above was taken.

Our trail guide, Rachel, a.k.a. “Iceman,” (we were told that the guides have given each other Top Gun-inspired nicknames) was nice enough to take the photo. And she kept up a smooth conversation with me and the two girls who rode the first two horses in our group. Laurel brought up the rear and was distantly involved in the conversing. But that wasn’t the reason she was fussy, notwithstanding the central Oregon dust kicked up by four preceding horses that left her in a cloud much of the way.

No, Laurel was fuming because of the increasingly tame “Hole in the Wall Gang” two-hour trail ride we had paid our $55 each for. We are longtime Black Butte Stables customers. We’ve gone out on this ride many times. So many times, that for a few years the Stables was letting us go out on our own without a guide. Ah, the good old days.

That was before Black Butte Stables was bought by an attorney. Now, there’s nothing inherently bad about attorneys. Nothing, that is, which couldn’t be fixed by erasing all memory of law school from their minds and taking away their licenses. For attorneys necessarily have legal minds. And legal minds worry about lawsuits. Combine this attribute with ownership of a stable and you have the recipe for a boring trail ride.

Many years ago we used to be able to gallop on this Hole in the Wall Gang ride. Some years ago we used to enjoy extended canters. A few years ago the policy changed to short canters. Then, extended trots. And now, short trots. Whoopee. What a wild gang the five of us were yesterday. Walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk (add about a dozen more “walks” for the proper walk/trot balance). Brief trot. Walk, walk, walk, walk…Well, you get the picture.

When we got back to our cabin we legalistically parsed the current description of the Hole in the Wall Gang ride on the Black Butte Stables brochure. “An exciting and challenging ride.” Your honor, a false and misleading statement! The ride was neither exciting nor challenging. “Riders…must have intermediate to advanced horsemanship skills.” No, your honor. If you could sit on a rocking horse, you’re qualified to go on this ride.

Lest I sound unduly critical of Black Butte Stables, I need to stress that we like the staff there; we like their horses; and we especially like the scenic trails surrounding the Black Butte development. And we understand the need for caution in these litigious times. Reportedly the Stables’ liability policy has some sort of “trot-only” clause in it.

That said, after our canterless and barely-trotted ride Laurel and I talked about the sorry state of affairs this country has gotten itself into when a fear of lawsuits leads to pony rides being eliminated by Black Butte Stables. Pony rides! Laurel fondly remembers how much she loved pony rides when she was a little girl, and how they were the first step to her loving horse rides as a big girl.

When virtually all risk is taken out of riding, it really isn’t riding. Especially when those paying their $55 for a two-hour ride are experienced riders who could be safely galloping rather than briefly trotting. Life isn’t risk-free, nor should it be. When lawyers and insurance companies took the fun out of an “advanced” trail ride, that’s when Laurel and I became convinced the legal liability system needs major reform.

Before, liability reform was pretty much an abstraction for us. Walking our horses on a two-hour trail ride for about 119 minutes brought the issue close to hand (and hoof).

The way things are going, next year the Hole in the Wall Gang ride will be entirely walking. The year after that, each horse will be accompanied by two stable staffers with air mattresses in hand, ready to break a fall if a rider falls asleep from boredom.

We’re looking for other riding options in the Camp Sherman/Sisters area. If anyone would like to look into the possibility of sharing the cost of owning and boarding a couple of horses in this area, send me an email. We only want to ride a week or less a month in central Oregon. If we could share ownership of some horses boarded near BLM/National Forest land with one or more other families, we’d be happy riders.

Belly-dancing and fast food in Sisters

In the course of meandering along the Sisters Art Stroll this afternoon we encountered belly dancers entertaining passers-by—most of whom stopped passing, as did we, to watch this contrarian bit of cowboy town culture.

Sisters is special. It’s sort of central Oregon’s Cannon Beach—a town with character, wise business signage and design rules, and artistic flair—while Bend is growing uncomfortably akin to Lincoln City, a minimally planned sprawl of malls, dense slow-moving traffic, and garish fast-food restaurants.

Picking up a copy of Sister’s weekly newspaper, The Nugget, we saw that the city council voted 3-2 to reject a proposed ordinance that would have limited “formula food” to the four existing operations (McDonalds, Subway, Figaro’s Pizza, and Bad Ass Coffee Company).

That’s too bad. Apparently lots of local citizens wanted additional chain fast-food outlets to stay out of quaint, quirky Sisters, while lots of the business and real estate community wanted to allow them. As so often happens, quantity of dollars won out over quality of life. Pro-formula food councilors said they were afraid of being slapped with a Measure 37 claim, though I suspect this wasn’t their main motivation for voting “no.”

Growth always is good in some people’s minds, even if they live in Sisters because they like its old-fashioned small town atmosphere. They seem to think that the character of Sisters won’t change with rapid growth. But one of the proponents of the Formula Restaurants Ordinance, Elayne Clark, wrote a letter to the Nugget editor that warned of what happened to Van Nuys, California in just a few years: “A veritable sea of fast foods restaurants, all neon lighted. It was heartbreaking to me.”

I’d be heartbroken myself if Sisters turns into another copycat corporate America town. Today we bought some art at the Soda Creek Gallery, a charming family-run business where last month Laurel had spotted a painting of two wolves peering through birch trees. Since her birthday is coming up in a few days, I figured that this would be a nice present—especially since I wouldn’t have to go to any trouble to pick it out.

Our art tastes aren’t sophisticated. Hanging in the bedroom of our co-owned Camp Sherman cabin is the last piece of art that we bought in Sisters, this “Good Morning!” print. We like the animals stretching.

We had a tough time deciding whether we should buy a canvas or print replication of the wolf painting. The gallery owners patiently answered our questions and then, after I had made an executive, man of the house, its-your-birthday-so-don’t-worry-about-the-price decision to go with canvas, worked with us on choosing a frame and whatever it is you call the stuff that goes between the canvas and the frame (since we had never bought anything other than a print, we were in new territory with this art purchase).

Finally the framing choice was decided upon. I got out my VISA card to pay for the wolf canvas. My name and address was written down in a notebook. Nothing else. “My husband, who does the framing, will remember what sort of frame you want,” we were told by his wife. “I’ll make sure he does.” I trusted her.

Walking back to our car I realized that we didn’t have a receipt for our purchase other than the VISA slip. We didn’t have any record of what piece of art we had bought or what sort of frame was going to be put on it. “Do you think we should go back and get a receipt?” Laurel asked. “No, I said. “This is Sisters. Deals get done with a handshake here.”

It takes longer to shop in Sisters than other places. While we were talking to the gallery owners, friends of theirs kept walking in the door who needed to be greeted with a hug. They’d say, “Sorry for the interruption.” I’d think, “Don’t be sorry for feeling that making human contact is more important than making a quick business deal.”

Don’t change, Sisters. If formula fast-food and other corporate chains are going to keep coming to town, you need to change those businesses to match your small-town character; don’t let them change you.

Getting the newspaper in Camp Sherman

I’ve taken over getting the morning newspaper when we’re at our cabin in Camp Sherman. This used to be Laurel’s responsibility. She'd drive to the store before going for a walk with Serena, our dog.

But with my new Taoist sensibilities, I figure it’s more real for me to be riding my bike in the cool central Oregon air than sitting on my butt at the kitchen table, waiting for the newspaper to appear, drinking coffee and reading, in a Tao Te Ching book, about the benefits of living more naturally.

It’s a whole two miles to the Camp Sherman store and back. I don’t have to fight the traffic though.

And the roadside signs aren’t too bothersome.

Halfway down the road Mt. Jefferson pops into view. Jeff says to me, "Good morning, Brian. Wouldn't have seen you if you were sitting at the kitchen table."

Then I arrive at the Camp Sherman city center. Today this old car passed me on the road and got to the store just before me. It fit perfectly with the store’s (non-functional) gas pumps. Sorry for the generic term, “old car,” but that’s the best I can do.

While I was taking the photo I was impressed to hear a guy yelling at the driver, “Hey, isn’t that a ’28 or a ’29?” I think the owner replied, “No, it’s a ’30.” Given the evident level of macho car expertise in the Camp Sherman store parking lot, I was reluctant to ask the much more basic question: “Hey, what kind of car is that?”

I love the alphabetically-organized customer account pads behind the counter. They remind me of the Three Rivers Market, the one and only store in Three Rivers, California when my mother and I moved there in 1955. Just like Camp Sherman, if you were a resident you put your purchases on account and paid at the beginning of the month, or when you could.

There’s only a few hundred year-round residents in Camp Sherman. Reminiscing with the store clerk today, I told her that the town where I grew up was similar in that there were lots of tourists around in the summer, but just locals later on.

“If an unfamiliar person walked into the store during the winter,” I said, “the locals would talk about them after they left: ‘Do you know who that was?’”

The clerk told me, “We’re just the same here. Except we flat-out ask them, ‘Who are you?”

In a world where everything seems to be changing, it’s nice to know that small towns aren’t. Stay the same, Camp Sherman. I love you as you are.

Poor us

Yesterday Laurel and I felt sorry for ourselves. You probably won’t feel sorry for us. But then, you’re not us. If you were us, pretty obviously you’d feel like just us. And even though you’re you and we are ourselves, I bet you’ve engaged in some similar feeling-sorryness that appears ridiculous to anyone else but you.

Here’s the deal: wanting knows no bounds. I realize this philosophically. The Buddha clearly explained how desire leads to suffering, and I’ve read my share of Buddhist books. But it isn’t until I’m face to face with a concrete example of how my wanting expands to fit the space available to it (which seemingly is infinite) that I really grasp what a trap I’m in. Laurel too. All of us, except the few with Buddha nature.

This is the view from the deck of the Camp Sherman cabin that we just came back from. We share ownership of the cabin with three other families. It sits on leased national forest service land on the banks of the Metolius River.

In 1997 we were fortunate to learn about a ¼ share of the cabin being put up for sale. At the time a Coldwell Banker realtor in Sisters told us that in the seven years he had been with the firm only one forest service cabin had been listed publicly, and he had never seen a partial share made available. These Metolius River cabins generally are passed down from generation to generation in a family, treasured assets that they are.

Laurel and I love the cabin. We love Camp Sherman. We love the Metolius River. And yet, we feel sorry for ourselves because we don’t have a direct view of the river like lots of other cabins do.

Whenever we walk to the cabin at the very end of the Metolius River trail, nearest to the head of the Metolius (which issues full-blown from a large spring), we envy the view those owners have from their deck. “They’re so lucky to have a view of the river,” we say. “We just look at trees. Poor us.”

I know, I know. This sounds ridiculous. It is ridiculous. But that’s how the human mind works: it always wants more, even when it has a lot.

Here’s a Calcutta street scene. I’m pretty sure most of the people who live in Calcutta wouldn't feel sorry for us if they knew that we have to look at just trees from inside the cabin rather than trees and the river. And yet, I’m willing to bet that if a Calcutta slum dweller were to be transplanted to our Camp Sherman cabin, within a few years he or she would be walking the river trail thinking just like us: “Oh, how nice it would be to have a better view.”

Well, I meditate every morning, as does Laurel. We await our enlightenments, the end of our never-ending wantings. For now, we make do with who we are.

I’ve taken to carrying a lounge chair the 100 feet or so from our cabin to the river, naturally feeling sorry for myself the whole way as I try to balance a chair and cushions in one hand, and a glass of juice, magazines, paperback book, and highlighter in the other. It’s a tough life.

I stagger with my load to the bank of the Metolius and settle in. Looking around, it’s a nice view. I can’t see it from our cabin—boo-hoo!—but they say that suffering is good for the soul.

I vow to endure, somehow, as I sip my cranberry juice and listen to the rushing water. Somewhere in Calcutta a street urchin is searching for food in a pile of trash. And I'm feeling sorry for myself.

Metolius River traffic and weather report

Reporting from the shores of the Metolius River in Camp Sherman, Oregon, just a few hundred yards from the head of the Metolius, and just a few hours late (hey, I’m on Camp Sherman time):

Nobody is on the trails.
Except two people and a dog.
One of whom (not the dog) says that walking traffic is flowing freely.
Just like the rain.
Cool 53 degrees rain.
And that’s your Metolius River traffic and weather report.
5:30 pm, May 1, 2005.

Final report from Maui

I’m almost packed for the flight home tomorrow. I have gone from clothing-deprived (see April 1 “How to get a man shopping” post) to Hawaiian Airlines bag overweight-likely. Laurel too. We’ve acquired a small, in retrospect, too small, extra bag to check into which we’ve crammed the heaviest items that otherwise would go in our suitcases.

The last time we flew home from Maui we not so brilliantly managed to pay overweight charges on both our suitcases, our excessively mellow minds not being able to fathom that if we simply took a few heavy things out of one suitcase and replaced them with a few light things from the other suitcase, we’d only have to pay a single $25 charge rather than two. Hopefully our planning is better this time.

I never expected to have to worry about taking too many clothes home when we left Salem. But my plan to spice up my shopping enthusiasm by purposely bringing just a few shirts, t-shirts, and shorts worked too well. This vacation has turned me into a semi-pro shopper, reserving the full “pro” designation for Laurel, naturally.

This afternoon I even found myself heading off down the road to Kahana on my own, eager to check out a few batik shirts that Laurel had espied earlier and thought I might like. Amazingly, she wanted to stay in our room, feed the birds, and watch the waves. I couldn’t believe that my shopping enthusiasm finally had out-stripped hers. Scary.

Even scarier, because the feeling was so unfamiliar, was how my mood changed soon after I entered Leslie’s Family Funwear. I felt energized, powerful, in charge of my life, joyful. In short, I had become a shopaholic. Temporarily, hopefully. Laurel often has described her own similar shopping feelings, but I never thought that my own endorphins ever would be stimulated into action by walking into a Leslie’s Family Funwear.

I still have some shopping skills to develop, though. T-shirt browsing is my weakest event, mostly due to my excessively compassionate Buddha-nature. I was having a great time looking for just one more extra-large Hawaiian-themed shirt to cram into my suitcase, unfolding with zeal the carefully folded shirts on display, doing my best to refold the rejects into a semblance of their previous pristinely neat appearance.

My best clearly wasn’t good enough, for after five or six T-shirt unfoldings and semi-refoldings I felt the eyes of the matronly Filipina proprietor looking critically upon my un-handiwork from the checkstand near the door. Indeed, I could tell myself that the extra-large row of T-shirts now appeared decidedly more in disarray.

She started to walk slowly in my direction. Shopping guilt overcame me. A shopping pro would have been able to control his emotions. Of course, a shopping pro would have known how to re-fold T-shirts back into their original shape. I wasn’t wildly attracted to any of the shirts I had looked at, but I grabbed one and walked briskly to the checkout counter with my other two batik shirts.

As I paid for my purchases I could see out of the corner of my eye the woman slowly, patiently, resignedly, refolding the T-shirts I had mangled. I felt deep compassion for her. I also thought to myself, “you’re a shopping wimp.” I need to get tougher if I aspire to making it to the pro shopping circuit. Also, I need folding lessons.

Some final photos:

Here’s Laurel outside the pacific’O restaurant where we enjoyed a “tower of tofu” meal last night. She looks matchingly wonderful, as usual.

And here’s our final Napili sunset. Rather cloudy, which has been the theme most of the past ten days here. But beautiful even with the trade wind induced showers.

Aloha.

More photos from Maui

Reporting from the shores of Napili Bay, I am pleased to announce that Laurel was whistled at during her morning walk around Kapalua and the Ritz Carlton. She humbly told me that she was whistled at from behind, but I assured her that, even at the age of 56, her front is well worth being whistled at also.

Here’s Laurel at dusk in front of the amazing waterfall at the Grand Wailea Hotel which, admittedly, would look a lot more amazing if the camera flash had reached it. We went to Kihei and Wailea yesterday and enjoyed walking around the grounds of the Grand Wailea, whose swimming pool is one of the wonders of the lodging world.

Tonight we return to our usual evening destination, Lahaina. There always are crowds waiting to eat at Cheeseburger in Paradise, which features a vegi-burger. We’ll past it up though for our absolute favorite meal in Maui, the aptly named “The Vegetarian Dish” at the pacific’O restaurant in Lahaina: “Roast marinated steak of tofu with a crown of sautéed quinoa, red lentils, Maui onions and shitake mushrooms. Topped with mixed sprout salad and carrot ginger sauce.” Don’t pass it up, vegetarian Maui vacationers.

A few days ago we got to watch two simultaneous weddings at sunset on the left side of Napili Beach. The closer couple got a great deal from the man who married them. After conducting the ceremony he picked up a ukulele and sang a song while the newlyweds danced barefoot in the sand. Sweet. And simple. It was just the two of them, no guests.

I love to go out by the Napili Shores pool and watch the sunset along with fellow guests. The large waves breaking over the reef just offshore provide continuous entertainment while we wait for the main sunset attraction.

Today the waves and high tide were so large there was barely any dry sand on Napili Beach. I took this photo of Laurel on an earlier calmer day. Fortunately I parked my beach pack on a rock this morning while I enjoyed boogie boarding the high waves for almost two hours. Later, I optimistically thought that I could lie on my mat and my friends, the waves, wouldn’t touch me. When I had to run to save my board and fins from being washed out to sea, and wash off the sand that a giganto wave had just deposited on me and my mat, I thought otherwise.

Laurel usually obeys rules.

Maui brings out the rebel in her (but she doesn’t hang towels over the railing). The red-headed birds have her perfectly trained. All they have to do is chirp on the deck and Laurel races out to feed them. She misses her daily feeding of birds back in Salem, and also our dog, Serena, so I think these “pets” fulfill a couple of away-from-home longings.

Boogie boarding do’s and don’ts

For a haole (non-Hawaiian/Caucasian) visiting Maui, my boogie boarding style is not bad—particularly for a 56 year-old Oregon guy. So, before I wipe out and crush my skull on a reef rock, I want to share some of the boogie boarding wisdom I’ve accumulated over several decades of warm-water vacationing.

First and most important: look good before you set out for the beach. Who knows, the surf may be down and you’ll spend the whole day sitting on your beach mat. You want to look like a boogie boarder even if you’re not boogieing.

Here I’m modeling, from top to bottom, a Pacific Whale Foundation cap (to demonstrate my eco-ocean sensibilities), rimless Maui Jim sunglasses (spendy but tropical trendy), a Xcel nylon/spandex shirt (protects against the sun and boogie board burn), and Tommy Bahama swimming trunks (picked out for me yesterday by Laurel, my personal shopper extraordinaire).

Most of these are, of course, entirely personal fashion statement preferences. However, I heartily recommend a similar shirt for serious boogie boarders. If you’re wave playing for several hours, as I was today, the effectiveness of the sunscreen you put on will be sorely diminished, and sore likely will be just how your red back and shoulders will feel the next day.

Plus, paddling around on a boogie board and bouncing along on waves while you’re lying flat on your stomach can cause boogie board rash. I get this right under my rib cage if I’m not wearing a shirt. So seriously consider wearing a top of some sort (a T-shirt will do fine, but is clammier than a nylon/spandex shirt).

Second: use fins (and a boogie board, of course). If you’re really adept at reading waves, knowing exactly where you have to be to catch one, you might be able to successfully boogie board without fins. But most people, which definitely includes me, find it much easier to maneuver around with fins.

I use snorkeling fins with ankle fasteners. If you don’t attach snorkeling fins to your ankles, almost certainly they’re going to come off in heavy surf. It isn’t fun to search for a fin while waves are breaking over you and you’re yelling, “Has anyone seen my fin?” It’s well worth it to spend a few bucks on ankle fasteners for the fin peace of mind. Or, you can get official boogie boarding fins that strap tightly to your foot, but this is impractical for most tourists.

So, once you’re well dressed and properly equipped, you’re ready to boogie. I’m assuming that you want to go out to where the waves are breaking well off the beach. You can play with your boogie board, though, right on or close to the beach—as are these folks I took photos of today.

However, real boogie boarding takes place a ways offshore where the waves first break. Sit on the beach and watch the boarders who are already out there if you haven’t boogied a location before. If you’re wondering why nobody is catching some wonderful looking waves, there usually is a good reason. Like rocks. Sharp rocks. Reef rocks. Nasty rocks.

Water is the best thing about boogie boarding. Rocks are the worst thing. I know where most of the rocks are in Napili Bay. I’m always thinking about how to avoid them. Wind and waves have a sneaky way of moving you from a safe boarding spot to right in front of a reef. If you catch a wave, you might well go right over the rocks. Or, you might not. When I’m in doubt about whether I’m going to catch a rock after catching a wave, I let the wave go.

Different strokes for different boarders though. Some boogie boarders are major risk takers. Some like to play it absolutely safe. Do what feels right to you. This photo shows the usual boogie boarding order of things: a line up of boarders ranging from closer in to farther out from shore (note them avoiding the rocks on the left). Generally, you’ll get more waves if you’re a bit closer in, because there are more smaller waves than larger waves, and larger waves break further out.

Larger waves usually are more fun. They’re also scarier, if you’re new to boogie boarding. In my opinion, the main thing to remember about waves is that water rarely hurts you. It’s rocks that hurt you. So if you’re thrashed around by a wave like clothes in the spin cycle of a washing machine, no big deal. You’ll pop up just fine, no worse for wear. It’s being thrashed around underwater when rocks are also underwater that hurts like hell. Again, stay away from rocks.

Try to catch a wave just as it’s breaking. Follow the line of white foam. Become the foam. Merge with the breaking wave.

If a large wave has already broken and you’re in front of it, you have two choices: go with it or go under it. Going under it is an essential boogie boarding skill. Just dip your head, press down on the front of the board, shut your eyes (if you wear soft contacts, like me), and kick with your fins. After the wave goes by you’ll pop up about where you were instead of halfway to the beach, which likely would have happened if you went with the wave.

That isn’t good if your goal is to get out to where the waves are breaking. Getting back out after catching a wave is what I like least about boogie boarding. They should have a rope tow or something, especially for geezers over fifty. Tip: don’t ride a wave all the way in if you don’t feel like paddling all the way back out. Tilt your board sideways and jump out of the breaking wave after you’ve had enough fun with it. That shortens the paddle back.

Often it’s best to paddle back in a half circle. In the surf a straight line usually isn’t the shortest distance, timewise, back out to where the waves are breaking. Head off to the left or right from where you ended up and the waves probably won’t be breaking right over you all the way back out.

People use various approaches to boogie board paddling. Easiest is the “hold on with both hands to the front of the board and kick with your fins” option. But this is tiring on the legs. Others use the “paddle with both hands, either both at once or alternately” option. That works fine if the ocean is calm. I’ve evolved a “paddle with one hand while hanging on with the other hand, plus kick” approach. I keep falling off the board when I paddle with both hands, so this is a workable hands/feet combination for the less dexterous.

Etiquette wise, try not to run into other people. Sometimes it can’t be helped, however. Today I rode a wave in most of the way on the back of another guy. Once I landed on top of him, I couldn’t get off. He didn’t seem to mind, thankfully. The very next wave I caught, two girls ended up on my back. Instant boogie board karma, I figured.

When you run over someone it’s good form to wave back at them with a breezy “sorry but I couldn’t help it hope you’re OK" gesture. If they don’t respond, you might check to be sure that you haven’t knocked them unconscious. Fortunately, boogie boards are a lot softer than surfboards.

Rather paradoxically, locals get preference in staking out the “sweet spot” where the best waves are breaking. Yes, they get to boogie board all the time and we tourists don’t. But the native Hawaiians have been roundly screwed by the Americans who took their land, so I don’t mind taking back seat to a local when it comes to catching a wave. Plus, you can learn a lot by shadowing the local boogie boarding guys and gals. They usually have a much better sense for the ocean that we haoles do, so I try to follow their lead.

Most of the time. On Kauai once I learned that if a couple of local guys start yelling at each other, “Here comes a big one,” it’s time for the haoles to swim for shore. If the locals seem just mildly enthused about a wave, then I figure I can handle it. But if they’re wildly excited about some monster that is approaching, I’ll probably be terrified.

Of course, that was quite a few years ago, and I’ve become a better boogie boarder now. About all I fear now is sunburn. Wear a shirt and put on lots of SPF 30 sunscreen. Then go out and boogie.

How to get a man shopping

Ladies, I’m sure you’ve asked yourself, “How can I get my man to love shopping as much as I do?” Admit it: you enjoy being with him, but it’s a drag when you’re just getting warmed up after hitting a dozen stores and he’s starting to whine, “Honey, can we go home now, I’m all shopped out.”

I have an answer for you. At least, an answer for when the two of you go on vacation. After he has finished packing his suitcase, open it up and take most of his clothes out. That way, when you arrive at your destination he’ll be motivated to go shopping with you since he won’t have much to wear otherwise.

I can testify that this approach works. However, I did this to myself on our trip to Maui—taking just a few T-shirts, a few Hawaiian shirts, and a few pairs of shorts for a twelve-day vacation. Usually I pack a lot more, but I decided to test out a hypothesis this time: Would shopping with Laurel be more enjoyable if I really needed to buy clothes?

My experimental answer: Yes. Here I am this afternoon on the ocean side of Front Street in Lahaina, wearing a fresh-off-the-rack Hilo Hattie shirt and clutching several recently purchased T-shirts. Usually Laurel shops me until I beg for mercy (also for food and a place to sit). However, I’ve been keeping up with her much better this trip, which I ascribe to my significantly increased motivation to find clothes to wear.

Understand, I’m still a shopping amateur. Laurel is the pro. On our first full day in Maui she had gone to three stores before I had finished eating breakfast. Being a woman, Laurel is energized by shopping. Being a man, I usually am drained by shopping. As noted above, I can’t count the number of times I’ve said “Well, I guess we’ve done enough browsing for one day,” and Laurel has replied, “Are you kidding? I’m just getting going.”

So that’s why a woman needs to give her man some extra motivation by making sure that he only has a few clothes to wear on vacation. It also helps if the clothes don’t match, another extra motivating factor that, in our case, I added by accident. Usually I make at least a cursory effort to see whether the T-shirts I bring to Maui have at least a vague matching relationship with the shorts I bring. That didn’t happen this time.

When I unpacked, I found that, defying the odds of probability, I had managed to pack three T-shirts and three pairs of shorts, each of which was a different color, yet somehow each combination of “top” and “bottom” was remarkably incompatible. Laurel, of course, always matches perfectly, which is why it takes her four times as long to pack.

However, when she gets where she is going, she actually has clothes that she can wear in public that don’t make little children scream, “Mommy, why does that man look so weird? He doesn’t match!” (I may be slightly exaggerating here, but I can easily believe that Laurel was such a child).

I am in good shape now, though. Six new T-shirts, a pair of shorts, three Hawaiian shirts, one water-resistant jacket (I forgot that it can rain a lot in Hawaii), and two baseball caps now reside in our condo closet.

The shopping gods have been kind to me. I knew it was going to be a good shopping day when a rainbow appeared over Lahaina and the West Maui mountains as we were setting out late this afternoon. The “L” on the hillside stands for Laurel, of course, a token of appreciation from the Front Street merchants (or so I like to think).

Life and death on a Maui beach

I may have watched a man die today at Napili Bay. Even on vacation reality intrudes, especially for the man and his family. I hope he lived. I’ll know what I read The Maui News tomorrow. What I do know now is that it is possible to die on a beach, relaxing in Hawaii, with not a care in the world. Until…

A burly fellow vacationer is pressing on your chest, doing CPR, while another man is rhythmically blowing air into your mouth. Your face is ashen. Your body is motionless. Waves break over your feet. But you can’t feel the water.

I was sitting under our favorite beach tree on a grass mat, watching kids playing in the surf, hoping that the waves would reach body-board riding height, happy that it wasn’t raining, just cloudy and threatening. I was so into my practice of wu-wei, not-doing, that at first the sight of a bunch of adults clustered around a spot of beach about forty yards to my left didn’t register. My mind even thought, “Maybe they’re having fun burying someone in the sand.”

Sadly, the “burying” part was uncomfortably close to the truth. When I trained my binoculars on all the activity I could see CPR being performed. It was jarring to listen to children having fun in the surf while I watched the solemn efforts to save the man’s life.

Soon, a siren. Medics from the fire department rushed to the man’s side. One felt his neck for a pulse. Defibrillation equipment was hastily unpacked. Paddles were placed on his chest. A ventilator went over his mouth. An intravenous drip went into his right arm. Hopefully all this effort paid off. I never saw the man move, nor any signs of relief from the medics or bystanders.

He was a big man, chunky. I couldn’t help but observe that most of the men who had come to his aid were similarly overweight. One beachgoer who helped carry the stretcher across the sand to the ambulance was positively obese. His stomach fat flapped as he struggled forward, carrying the front of the stretcher. Will these men change their under-exercising, over-eating ways now that they’ve seen how a heart attack (which I assume is what happened) can strike anywhere, anytime?

Probably not. We all have our ways of denying death. Good ways. Effective ways. I do too. Until I see death close-up through a pair of Nikon binoculars, imagining myself lying in the sand, unconscious, having my chest compressed while my wife looks on with terrified eyes.

She seemed to be his wife, at least. And the younger woman, his daughter. While the medics were getting him ready to be transported two policemen got out report books and took statements from the women. The women obviously were torn, one part of them wanting to respond to the police questions, another part trying to remain aware of what was being done to save the husband’s/father’s life.

After he was taken up the slope of the beach to the ambulance, the women rushed around picking up the remnants of what had started out as a happy day on Maui. Towels, suntan lotion, drink containers—everything got hurriedly wrapped up in their beach mats. They half-ran after the police. Suddenly there was no trace of what had happened.

Just a empty patch of beach.

Laurel walked down from our condo soon after. She had missed everything. She told me all about her morning’s shopping experiences. I related my dying-man-on-the-beach story.

I soon forgot about him. I waited for big body-boardable waves that never came. I went for my daily 30-minute swim. We went back to our room and ate lunch. I read my Jack Reacher thriller, “Without Fail.” I took my afternoon Maui nap.

Everything is back to normal. Except, really, it isn’t. Ever. It can’t be when “normal” is just one heartbeat, a single breath, from simply being a meaningless word.

A dying man on the beach convinced me of that. As if I needed to be convinced.

Feeling half my age on Maui

We got to Maui yesterday. I’d only been here a few hours when I felt half my age. Actually, less than half. For I was “carded” while buying some groceries at the Napili Market. Ah, the joy! I immediately thought that I must be the most youthful-looking fifty-six year old on earth when a checker asked to see my driver’s license before he’d sell us the wine that Laurel had put in our basket.

Unfortunately, it turns out that Maui County has a law requiring proof of 21-ness before alcoholic drinks can be sold to anybody. This seems ridiculous, especially in light of the fact that whenever we walk down Lahaina’s Front Street, we usually get a few open requests from locals to sample what, in the old 60’s days, was called Maui Wowie. Apparently the sale of alcohol is more heavily regulated on Maui than the sale of marijuana. Clearly the checker also found the law senseless, since he gave us a rant about useless government regulation while he was bagging our groceries.

So that’s one new thing about Maui we’ve discovered on this, our 15th visit to the island. The weekly comics in both the Maui and Honolulu newspapers are in color now—that’s also new. And it’s also new that, on our first day here, the weather is windy and showery. Almost always we’ve been treated to nice weather until near the end of our stay, but Maui decided to throw us a change-up this year.

Oh well. The view is still beautiful from our Napili Shores condo. Note the intrepid Napili Bay beach-goers in the foreground. Quite a few vacationers aren’t deterred from enjoying the ocean by breezy trade winds and frequent showers. Especially kids, who I can hear screaming happily in the surf right now even as it’s sprinkling.

When you’re wet all over, does it matter if it’s raining? I lived out this adage on our own mostly-dry beach visit this afternoon when a passing shower spurred me to my daily Maui ritual of swimming back and forth across Napili Bay. Thirty minutes, non-stop. My style is of my own invention, designed to lessen the chance of a contact lens washing out: twenty side-strokes, then ten modified back-strokes; repeat for about two and a half crossings of the bay.

Like they say about fishing, for us a bad day on Maui is better than almost all good days anywhere else. I love going to sleep with the sound of waves. I love eating small sweet bananas that are so much tastier than the bland variety we get on the mainland. I love how everyone, locals and visitors alike, are almost universally relaxed, laid-back, hang-loosed.

This wasn’t the case with Laurel, though, as our Hawaiian Airlines flight from Portland was boarding. One of our “charming” married-for-15-years rituals (it’s more charming to me than to Laurel) is that whenever we fly, she says “Please, don’t wait to get on at the last minute like you always do,” and I say, “Don’t worry, I’ll be at the gate twenty minutes before takeoff, like I always am.”

I have carefully researched boarding rules. The general policy of airlines seems to be that the plane door is closed ten minutes before takeoff, and passengers are to be on board fifteen minutes before takeoff. So getting on the plane twenty minutes early is entirely in order, especially since my carry-on bag is able to fit under the seat in front of me. It doesn’t have to be squeezed, defying all the laws of compression physics, into an overhead compartment half the size of the bag—the annoying practice of so many other passengers.

Yesterday, after indulging in our habitual “She says, He says” argument, Laurel suggested that we ask the Hawaiian gate personnel their opinion. “Great,” I replied, confident that airline regulations were on my side. And indeed, the guy we queried said, “If you’re at the gate twenty minutes before departure, that should be fine.”

“Yes!” I cried, pointing two index fingers at Laurel and doing a little victory dance around her, while the Hawaiian Airlines person did his best to look down at some paperwork and avoid taking sides in what so obviously was a (minor) marital spat.

Looking back at the moment, though, in my excitement at winning our argument I didn’t pay enough attention to another comment the gate guy made: “The scheduled departure was 10:00 am, and the plane is now supposed to take off at 10:21.” In hindsight, I should have given the word “supposed” more weight.

So my personal pre-take off preparations, which included a leisurely perusal of the Oregonian sports page in the stall of an airport rest room, didn’t take sufficient account of the fact that when a scheduled departure is changed from 10:00 to 10:21, the airline does its best to leave as close to 10:00 as possible, notwithstanding the assurance made by the gate guy that I could show up at 10:00, no problem.

When I exited the restroom just down from the gate at 9:59, feeling right on schedule and pleasantly lighter compared to when I entered, the first thing I noticed—indeed, couldn’t help but notice, was that a blonde-haired woman, who bore a remarkable resemblance to Laurel, was waving her hands and screaming at someone, who seemingly was me, “Hurry up! They’re holding the plane for you!”

“Ah, another little joke by Laurel,” I thought, barely hastening my steps. “Run! Run! They’re going to leave without you!” Which, as it turned out, was disturbingly close to the truth. I was the last one on board, and we had to kick a woman out of one of our seats who had been told by a flight attendant, “Everyone should be on the plane by now; you can choose a different open seat now.”

Maybe this will teach me a lesson. Maybe. I still believe the constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishment, such as forcing a man over 6’ 1” into a coach seat designed for female gymnasts. Five and a half hours flight time from Portland to Maui struck me as long enough punishment; I didn’t want to endure any extra minutes.

But what the heck. Marriage is all about compromises. Next flight I’ll be at the gate twenty minutes before the scheduled departure—the original scheduled departure. And Laurel will be ready to go when I say, “It’s time to leave for the movie or we’ll be late!”

Change, it can happen at any age. Especially the age when you're youthful enough to be carded at the grocery store. Which on Maui, is any age. I love Maui: the ever-young island.

I’m out-pararazzi’d

When I opened up the February 7 issue of Us weekly, I understood why People never took up my offer to sell the photo of Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake hiking in Hollywood’s Runyon Canyon that I took January 23 (see “Wide-Eyed on Rodeo Drive”).

Apparently celebrity magazines prefer close-up shots like this:

To my slightly more distant treatment:

Probably long-lens equipped professional paparazzi realize the truth of this “Where celebs really hang out in LA” piece, which presciently says, “At nearby Runyon Canyon Dog Park, you might find William H. Macy taking his pooch for a little fresh air or Cameron Diaz jogging on the trails.”

Or, they should add, “Oregonians like Brian and Laurel Hines looking for celebrities jogging on the trails.”

Wide-eyed on Rodeo Drive

Really short shorts. A model you can stand on. Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake. During our weekend trip to Hollywood and Beverly Hills we were wide-eyed at the never-in-Oregon sights we saw.

Here’s Laurel and my daughter, Celeste Vos, colorfully mixing with the Pacific Design Center. LA is bold and bright. It grew on us this trip, though we aren’t ready to trade in Oregon for southern California.

Speaking of bold, the Gucci store on Rodeo Drive featured these short shorts. Celeste’s husband, Patrick, manages the men’s department. [Note to Gucci security: he didn’t know I snapped the in-store photos] It was an erotic moment fondling the strategically-placed price tag. Which read, I believe, $375.

While I was fondling the shorts, Laurel was ogling Gucci male models strutting their runway stuff on a nearby monitor. I knew Laurel liked to watch TV, but I had never seen her so mesmerized. Must have been the clothes that were so fascinating (yeah, right).

The Prada store lobby featured models in underground grottos you could stand on, plus some headless naked mannequins. Inside, Celeste said the dressing rooms have cameras that show you a 360 degree view of yourself and your potential pricy Prada purchase. Way cool.

Here are some Rodeo Drive babes who were only too happy to pose for me.

Had to prove that we were really there.

I got to visit a place of pilgrimage for me, the renowned Bodhi Tree Bookstore. Since I’m a metaphysical bookaholic, I felt like a drunk set loose in the Jim Beam warehouse. Only bought two books though, a miracle.

Sunday morning Celeste took us for a hike at Runyon Canyon. We ran into Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake. Not literally, but they were just a few feet away coming down as we were going up. I didn’t want to act like a doofus Oregon tourist, so waited until they were past to whip out my camera. The teeny tiny white dot way down the trail is Cameron. Or maybe Justin. People magazine, make me an offer on the photo (minimum bid, 25 cents).

Celeste printed out a trail map from Runyon-Canyon.com. Unfortunately, we didn’t read the part that said “Going anti-clockwise is a much more energetic climb up the steps and steep slopes between Inspiration Point and Clouds Rest.” Here’s Celeste trying to inspire some breath in this very location.

The 50-somethings left the 30-something panting by the side of the trail and zipped up to Cloud’s Rest. We were treated to a beautiful view of the Hollywood hills.

So many amazing southern California sights. But this tops them all: an eleven hundred square foot house on half a lot listed for $800,000. In Salem, you probably could get it for $150,000, maybe less. On Sunday we went to a couple of open houses with Celeste. She says, “Whenever I’m feeling too good and want to get depressed, I go look at houses for sale in the Hollywood area.”

Celeste and Patrick own a condo but want to move up to a home with character for $700,000 or less. If you’ve got one in West Hollywood, I have a buyer for you (as if you didn’t already have a crowd of would-be buyers on your doorstep).

Police do read weblogs

Sender: “Black Butte Police” Subject: “Weblogs”

This header definitely caught my eye as I scanned my Outlook inbox for new email messages. What had I done? And why was the Black Butte Police force coming after me for doing it? I skipped past the daily deluge of plaintive missives from the Kerry campaign, Democratic Party, and MoveOn.Org to click on this mysterious communication.

The message was short:

“By the way, we do read weblogs! Your citation will be forthcoming….Just joking.
Gil Zaccaro, Chief
Black Butte Ranch PD”

I was immediately appreciative to Chief Zaccaro for adding “just joking.” But now I had to figure out what he was just joking about. I couldn’t remember any genuinely citationable offenses we had committed at Black Butte Ranch. (And even if I could have, I darn well wouldn’t admit to them in this posting, now that I know the Chief’s fondness for Googling.)

So I looked through the “recreation” category of HinesSight for just-joking-offenses. It didn’t take me long to locate the post that caught Chief Zaccaro’s eye, for along with an incriminating photo I had said:

“Since I’m an avid writer and reader, naturally I didn’t pay attention to any of the large, clearly lettered signs plastered along the length of the corral fence. When Laurel returned and saw me patting a horse she pointed out this message. I then made Miss Goodie-Two-Shoes-Always-Do-What-You’re-Told express some of her wild side. But she didn’t want to show her face, in case the Black Butte Ranch police read weblogs.”

I wrote back to the Chief and told him that I was prepared to testify against my wife if there was a substantial reward in it for me. In fact, I was also prepared to testify against myself if this would double the reward.

Sadly for my pocketbook, but happily for my marriage, Chief Zaccaro replied: “Your ‘reward’ is that you get to come back and enjoy the ranch again.” OK, fair enough. This is my kind of policeman—a weblog reader with a warm sense of humor.

If he ever catches me speeding in Black Butte Ranch, I’ll remind the Chief of his saying that I like so much: “Your citation will be forthcoming….Just joking.”

Suttle Lake has survived

We hiked around Suttle Lake in central Oregon today, all 3.7 miles, and have photos to prove that while the B & B Complex fire may have scarred the area, its beauty survives. Last fall we attempted the same hike but were stymied by “trail closed due to fire damage” signs. A lot of work has been done since then on the trail that circles the lake, for which we’re most grateful.

As soon as we parked the car and walked to the lakeshore we could tell that Suttle Lake was still its beautiful self. In places the fire went all the way to the edge of the lake, but in general the trees and vegetation that immediately surround it are much more green than gray.

Well, not only green this time of year, red and golden also. We were afraid that all of the red leaf maples along the shoreline had been burned up. Thankfully, most of them were still alive and kicking color.

Serena found this hike much more fun than walking around on a leash at the Harvest Faire (see yesterday’s posting). We managed to coax her back from chipmunk chasing for a red leaf maple photo opportunity (don’t worry, the chipmunks are quicker than she is; plus, they can climb trees and she can’t).

This is a fire-blackened snag lying in the water. You can see a mixture of living and dead trees on the other side of the lake. A friend told me that when he took his Japanese in-laws on a tour of this area they were inspired to create some artwork of the blackened forest. Yes, death by fire is as much a part of nature as is the vegetative life that we normally celebrate.

It just takes a different eye to appreciate it. I haven’t yet developed that eye. When Laurel and I looked away from Suttle Lake, up the slope that the fire came down, we didn’t like what we saw.

Still, it is a law of nature that sometimes things are up, and sometimes things are down. These geese bobbing for food at The Lodge at Suttle Lake end of the lake reminded me of that. Geese bottoms and geese heads were equally in evidence as we walked by.

The resort is in the midst of an impressive building boom that we were told should be completed by Spring 2005. A new several-story Cascadian Style lodge with a great room overlooking the lake is described in the brochure we were given. They serve lunch from 11-4 every day except, sadly, Monday. Next time we’ll take our hike on a day that lets us feast on pizza rather than power bars during our halfway around-the-lake break.

Images of the Sisters Harvest Faire

Generally it’s my policy not to purchase anything in a store that calls itself a “shoppe,” or attend an event that bills itself as a “faire.” But Laurel and I make an exception every October for the Sisters Harvest Faire, which fills several blocks of this charming central Oregon town with over 200 juried vendors of handcrafted quality arts and crafts.

Last year’s HinesSight posting about our visit focused on how little attention our dog, Serena, got from Faire visitors even given (1) her natural adorableness, and (2) the blue bandana that I had affixed to her neck to give her an extra artistic Faire flair. This year I tried to lower my expectations for “What a beautiful dog! Can I touch her?” exclamations.

Still, as noted in the October 2003 posting, I had a feeling that a spiffier bandana might do the trick. So Laurel managed to find a Western-themed bandana with cacti and donkeys, perfect for the Western-themed town of Sisters. In this photo Serena is bereft of admirers, but we had just gotten to the Faire and word hadn’t yet spread that the Dog of Dogs had hit town.

Laurel spent much time deeply contemplating one of her favorite wonders of life: earrings.

Serena seemed to like this “booth” most of all. When I saw her heading for a red fire hydrant, I feverishly grabbed my camera, hoping against hope that I’d be able to snap the perfect dog cliché. And though it isn’t entirely evident (Serena is a she, after all), she did it!

We didn’t have enough room in our house, or money in our bank account, to bring home a wooden sculpture of a rhinoceros or a bear playing golf, but I sure wish we did.

My big art purchase was a metal stepping stone with the Chinese ideogram for “Harmony.” When we get home I have big plans for it outside my office window. Green moss springing up in the cut outs? Or white pebbles?

The Tao will guide me. Along with a female voice which could well say: “You’re not planning to leave it there, are you?” Of course, perhaps the All-Wise and All-Powerful Tao is the female voice. So would Laurel have me believe, and so indeed it may be.

The clouds speak to me

During a Metolius River walk with Serena this afternoon I paused to lay on my back in the grass and see what the passing clouds had to say to me.

Right away it was evident they could read my mind. Yes, I do have a question. Might as well ask the Big One: What is the meaning of life?

And the next cloud that came by had the answer: “I” Hmmmm. Quite profound. Hindus say, “Atman (soul) is Brahman (God). Moses was told by God, “I am that I am.” I am God, the clouds tell me. I like it!

Then, a wrinkle appears in my so-easy-god-realization. A hole. Emptiness. Must rid myself of ego to become the divine. OK. Whatever you say, sky. You’re doing the talking today, not me.

I started walking again, so happy that the clouds had given me such an unambiguous message. Henceforth I would pursue my meditation with more vigor and more humility. The heavens had spoken!

But suddenly I looked up and saw…Larry, of the Three Stooges. Clearly. Without a doubt. Is a cosmic joke at the heart of reality? Were the cloud gods telling me to laugh at how I had taken them so seriously?

Then the Id made its appearance in the Central Oregon sky. Elemental phallus pointing me toward…what? Are we born only to lust, to screw, to have children, to die? Could the meaning of life just be the urge of DNA to reproduce itself? Am I that base, that crude, that physical?

Perhaps. For the last image I saw before putting Serena in the car to drive back to the cabin was, unmistakably, very large breasts. Nice.

I happily envisioned spending eternity with the Sky Goddess.

But then I looked in another direction and realized that I had been missing the most obvious truth in the heavens. Still, it was a fun ride sitting still and seeing the clouds go by. Sort of like watching thoughts pass in my stream of consciousness.

Which, of course, was what all this was.

Images of Indiana

Even with a bit of jet lag we’re pretty sure this is Indiana. I took some photographic evidence today to confirm that we’ve left Oregon.

I’ve never seen a Kudzu attack in the Northwest. I thought that Kudzu was a purely southern botanical nightmare, but the tenacious tendrils around the attackee here, Jerry Pagac (husband of Laurel’s sister, Mardee), prove otherwise. Jerry is the director of state parks in Indiana, so you'd think he'd know better than to get so close to rapidly growing Kudzu. Hopefully this non-native nuisance can't grow in Oregon. It'd be the devil's twin if it hooked up with that damnable Himalayan Blackberry that is such a nuisance in our south Salem lives.

I looked and looked during a walk in the woods today, and didn’t see a single fir tree. More proof. I also felt a lot of humidity, another unusual sensation in Oregon for which Oregonians can be hugely thankful. When we got off the airplane, at first I thought the sauna-like atmosphere was kind of cool (figuratively speaking, of course). But it doesn’t take long to realize that a sauna is pleasant because you can get out of it. This Indiana sauna is the very air.

Wonder of wonders, there are still places in the country where you can smoke in a Burger King. Probably there are lots of places. We non-smokers are spoiled in Oregon. Our Veggie Burgers had a faintly smoked essence to them, and that didn’t have anything to do with the ingredients or how they were cooked. The “smoking area” actually took up about ¾ of the Burger King, non-smokers being confined to a small strip under the sign. I guess the closer you get to Kentucky and points south, the bigger pull tobacco has.

I’ve gone into many public restrooms in Oregon and can’t recall ever seeing a bunch of Christian save-your-soul booklets scattered around. The first public restroom I entered in Indiana (other than at the airport) had this possibly blasphemously-positioned pamphlet right where I couldn’t miss it. Well, actually I could miss it, if you get what I mean, which saved me from engaging in a decidedly blasphemous act.

The real Indiana is, I feel, embodied in this vegetable stand in front of the grower's home. The guy was wonderfully polite and straightforward. He was manning the stand at the moment, but there was a plastic box on the table for when he wasn’t that said “Leave money inside. Thank you.” Yes, this sort of trust also can be found in Oregon. It just seemed so quintessential mid-West. We liberal West-coasties sometimes mock those with “traditional values.” Yet when you meet someone solidly Indianaish, you realize there is an awful lot to like about them.

Whitewater and wading on the Deschutes River Trail

Here’s our experientially confirmed advice about the Deschutes River Trail: walk it, don’t bike it. This is what we also advised last summer, after concluding that if you’re going to walk your mountain bike over all the “mountain” parts of a trail, and those parts constitute a healthy proportion of the trail, then you might as well simply walk the whole way rather than having to struggle to both walk and push your bike half the way.

This assumes, of course, that you are not one of the hell-bent (or emergency room-bent) mountain bikers who abound in Central Oregon, and who we observed whizzing past us on the Deschutes River Trail from our safe vantage point several feet off of what is, for them, a really fun amusement ride—and for us (Laurel particularly), is a Mountain Bike Chamber of Horrors. Steepness! Slopeness into riverness! Sharp rockness! Yesterday we decided to walk and reserve our sense of horror for Bush’s political policies.

Look how relaxed Laurel is by Lava Island. Quite a change from last year, when we barely noticed Lava Island, so intent we were on keeping our bikes from falling off the trail into that merrily rushing along side channel of the Deschutes.

There’s a lot to see on a hot August afternoon. We observed some curious boating behavior that didn’t have anything to do with propelling the boat down the river. Rather, it had everything to do with falling into the river, which occurred a split second after this photo was snapped.

Whatever problems exist out there in the physical world, and in here in my mental world, they quickly faded away from consciousness. A flowing river has a way of smoothing out normally irritating psychic rough spots. Which makes me wonder: are those spots ever really there if they fade away so readily?

Big Eddy Falls is a great spot for lunching, relaxing, and people watching. The people of interest are in whitewater tour boats, and Big Eddy Falls is, I believe, their peak whitewater experience. Most of the boaters’ faces show excitement-tinged joy. It’s fun to see people having fun.

After making it through a stretch of serious whitewater, a boaters’ salute is in order. Touch paddles and praise the River Gods.

Just above Big Eddy Falls we found a place to practice our own daring Deschutes River activity: close-to-whitewater wading. Imagine! Just around the corner from where we’re standing are dangerous rapids! Call us crazy, but we like to live life on the edge (especially the edge of our couch, the edge of our bed, the edge of our recliner).

We were able to decompress from our wading excitement on the walk back to the Meadow Picnic Area, where we started. This is a view of a peaceful pond separated from the Deschutes by a dike that also serves as the trail.

The only fly in the ointment of an otherwise great Central Oregon excursion came when we made the entirely unwise decision to look in Bend for two green plastic outside chairs to take back to our shared Metolius river cabin. These were to replace two otherwise identical plastic outside chairs that happen to be white, and thus far outside of our Feng Shui sensibilities.

However, I soon discovered that also far outside of my Feng Shui sensibilities is sitting in the rear compartment of our station wagon with the hatch open in 95 degree heat, trying to keep the dog cool and watered while Laurel goes into store after store searching for those elusive green chairs.

On the north side of Bend, first at Home Depot and then at Target, I managed to maintain most of my Deschutes River Trail-induced calm. After driving through rush-hour traffic to the south side of Bend and experiencing the unsplendor of the Fred Meyer parking lot with Serena, my calm had turned into heat-amplified irritation.

And by the time Serena and I had lapped up the rest of my last water bottle while waiting through Laurel’s visits to Sears and Shopko in the middle part of Bend, I had lost all ability to flow with the current of life. I was beached on my own shoal of “what the hell are we doing spending more than an hour looking for green plastic chairs in a hot asphalt jungle?”

It was easy to feel at one with the cosmos while I was along the Deschutes River. Now, if only I can learn to do the same while I’m immersed in my own stream of consciousness.

[Note: this hike is the beginning of the "Dillon and Benham Falls" hike, #34, in our edition of William Sullivan's great book, "100 Hikes in the Central Oregon Cascades"]

Black Butte ups and downs

Staggering along dead tired, less than halfway up Black Butte on this warm sunny August afternoon, I kept hearing myself mutter, “Whose damn idea was this anyway?” And through my parched lips the muttered answer came, “You, you idiot.”

It always seems like a good idea to climb Black Butte when I’m coolly sitting at the kitchen table of our Metolius river cabin, reading the Bend “Bulletin” and having a breakfast of blueberry pancakes at the eminently reasonable hour of noon.

It doesn’t seem like such a good idea when we arrive at the trailhead. A glance at the sign reminds me that though the distance to the top seems short, “seems short” has a different meaning when it is all a steady uphill. And what is with the X through the “2” and the etched-in “3”?

Somebody is trying to send a message to me. Is it really two miles that feels like three miles? Or is it really three miles that feels like whatever three steep, hot, dusty, sunny miles feel like? Or is it two miles if you’re under 50, and three miles for the couple currently reading the sign? I haven’t taken a step on the trail and already I’m lost.

Things didn’t get any better when I quickly realized that Laurel is in better uphill shape than me. My male ego (is there any other kind?) refuses to admit that she is in overall better shape, but when it comes to striding up the side of a mountain, or climbing the stairs in a shopping mall, she leaves me gasping for air, staring at her eminently starable backside receding into the distance.

This was my view for most of the hike up, staring at tiny dots of a fit blonde woman and her not-yet-exhausted canine companion far above me on the trail. They waited for me to catch up now and then and I’d unashamedly lie, “Been stopping to take lots of pictures.” Also, to relieve the pounding in my chest and the sweat pouring off my forehead.

As is usually the case with mountains, I forgot about all my griping and moaning on the way up once we reached the top. “The tougher the climb, the more beautiful it is at the top” is a semi-cliché that nonetheless holds true in so many aspects of life.

I am fascinated by the cabin that the people who man (and/or woman) the fire lookout on the Black Butte summit live in. This is my fantasy, to live on the edge of civilization, perched on the edge of a mountain, marvelous views in every direction, sustained with just the bare necessities of life.

Which, when I think about the situation more realistically, would include for me: satellite television, computer and Internet access, rental DVD movies, air conditioning, daily mail and UPS delivery, easy access to organic health food, an athletic club, bookstores, and other conveniences. And that’s only the beginning of my “bare necessities” list. So this cabin fantasy likely will remain just that, a fantasy. But I still spent a lot of time today staring at this can’t-beat-the-view home, imagining myself living a really simple life.

Laurel met an overly tame chipmunk which evidently is filling the evolutionary niche of Animal Sustained by Treats Provided by Hikers Sitting on Black Butte Summit Bench. Naturally the always prepared Laurel had a perfectly healthy chipmunk treat with her, some unsalted nuts. The whole time we were feeding and taking photos of the chipmunk, Serena, wonder dog that she is, was fruitlessly looking around for chipmunks in some rocks thirty feet or so away.

We kept whispering to Tame Chipmunk, “hurry up and get your treats while the dog thinks you’re over there.” I succeeded in getting a close-up of our new friend that is the stuff dog’s dreams are made of. View it and weep, Serena.

Images of the Salem Art Fair

Every year, for three days, the Salem Art Fair enables Salem to toss off its boring, conservative, uninspiring persona and become the place it should be all the time: colorful, creative, uninhibited. Here’s some of what we saw during our highly enjoyable five hours at the Fair last Saturday.

I can’t imagine that there is a more attractive setting for an art fair in the northwest. Maybe anywhere. Bush Park is perfect for this event. Massive oaks shade the booths. Grassy open spaces are for sitting, playing, and eating.

At first I thought my digital camera captured a paparazzi photo of Billy Bob Thornton at a hat booth. But on closer inspection, I couldn’t detect any signs of Angelina Jolie tattoos. So I guess this really was Ron Morey, dignified President of NorthStar Consulting in Seattle, who spent the weekend with us.

Ron’s wife, Rita, came along too. We had fun dressing up Ron.

Later Rita got to model a really nice, and really expensive, handmade piece of wearable art.

If you’re an artistically inclined wood worker, what do you do with an old toboggan? Why, make it into a lounge chair, of course.

I spent a lot of time “enjoying” (in the very best quotation-marks sense of the word) this view of the art fair. It seemed like there were lots more dichroic glass earring booths this year. I was happy for Laurel. I really should get my ears pierced, and embrace more of my feminine side, so I could be equally happy.

The didgeridoo booth was popular. I think kids are attracted to these things because they sound so much like farting when a neophyte blows on them.

Going to an art fair makes you realize how uncolorful much of American culture is, and how nice it is to be immersed in color for a few hours.

The “Oregon Reads” Author’s Table was disappointingly deserted. Of course, authors are used to being ignored by publishers, agents, reviewers, and worst of all, readers. Writers are tough. But now I feel bad that I didn’t visit the booth. These guys look lonely.

We always end our Art Fair visit by sitting on the grass and listening to music. This year, boogie-woogie music. I was fascinated by how this hot dog’s tongue matched the lady’s shirt. The dog’s owner probably wondered why I snapped so many photos of his otherwise unremarkable (though engagingly cute) canine.

As we were about to leave the fair Billy Bob almost succeeded in running away with my wife. But I won her back with a promise of more dichroic earring shopping. To keep her, a man has to know what really turns on his woman.

Black Butte Ranch stampede!

Our bike tour of the Black Butte Ranch resort (near Sisters) began with a bite and ended with a stampede. The bite actually wasn’t as dangerous as it sounds, since it was what Laurel and I did repeatedly to the Boca burgers we ordered at the charming poolside café, where we’re pretty sure we saw a bald eagle. Not being grilled, thankfully, but swooping down next to one of the condominiums.

We then biked to the Black Butte stables. While Laurel was checking on the status of tomorrow’s trail rides, I made friends with several of the horses in the corral. Well, after he rubbed his nose up against my armpit, this guy didn’t exactly look like he wanted to be friends with me. I hadn’t seen a horse make this particular expression before. But then, I haven’t spent a lot of time around horses. Maybe this is the usual equine post-armpit smelling expression.

Since I’m an avid writer and reader, naturally I didn’t pay attention to any of the large, clearly lettered signs plastered along the length of the corral fence. When Laurel returned and saw me patting a horse she pointed out this message. I then made Miss Goodie-Two-Shoes-Always-Do-What-You’re-Told express some of her wild side. But she didn’t want to show her face, in case the Black Butte Ranch police read weblogs.

Pedaling past one of the resort golf courses we saw why the Humane Society advises players not to hit long on this hole.

On the next hole there appeared to be a problem with the gallery waddling right out onto the fairway just as this guy was beginning his swing.

After more wrong turns on the bike paths than my male ego would like to admit to (I was the keeper of the Black Butte map, naturally, and not too gracefully led the way), we finally found our favorite path across the main meadow. By this time Laurel was so hungry she could eat a cow pie.

But sometimes an underlying harmony to the cosmos manifests itself even after things seem to have gone wrong. It’s as if the universe wants to say to us, “What’s right, and what’s wrong? You have no idea, do you?” For all our Black Butte meanderings and wrong turns brought us to the other side of the meadow precisely at the moment some stable folk (and one energetic Australian cattle dog) were herding the horses from one pasture to another.

Imagine how great this photo would have been ("the one that got away") if the lead horses hadn’t veered off to the right just as they were about to stampede past me. The bad news was that a couple bicycled right up to the gate just as the horses were about to run through, thereby spooking them, and spoiling what I thought was going to be a close-up stampede photo.

But the good news is that the cattle dog helped bring them around, and pretty soon they were running past me from another direction. I felt like I was reliving “Rawhide” (which shows my age), except those were cattle, and these were horses. And that was TV, and this was real. Still, the central Oregon dust sure reminded me of whatever guy it was on “Rawhide” who usually got the job of whatever it was called to ride at the back of the herd.

A HinesSight Trivia Award (nothing material, just praise) will be extended to any reader who can remember (1) the name of that dusty guy, and (2) the name of the job where you had to eat dust all day long. Comment away.

Adventure on the Metolius

On our evening walk, Laurel and I encounter a savage beast, ready to leap on us from a rock outcropping. Our hearts pound. We wonder if this will be our last walk together, ever.

Somehow, the beast is tamed. We marvel at the length of its tongue. Oh, how fortunate we were not to be engulfed by that fearsome maw!

Reaching the river, a herd of large creatures that had been browsing in a meadow approach us. Laurel is brave enough to touch one. From their mouths, we surmise they are less carnivorous than our newly befriended beast.

Ah, the wonders of the Metolius. We gaze upstream toward the mysterious Black Mountain. What else shall we encounter on the remainder of our Quest? Tomorrow, the journey continues.

Images of Salem's World Beat Festival

The worst-kept secret in Oregon? Salem is a boring town. I like to say that Salem is the amorphous undistinguished center between four interesting one-hour-away compass points. North is Portland. South is Eugene. West is the Pacific Ocean. East is the Cascades. And in between all these wonders? Blahville USA.

Except for a few times a year. July's Salem Art Fair & Festival and June's World Beat Festival are exceptions to the boring rule in the town we call, yawn..., Home. Laurel and I went to the World Beat Festival at Riverfront Park last evening, and I returned for another hit of funness this afternoon. Here are some images of what we experienced.

Our first stop was for some vegetarian dal and rice, which I ate while enjoying the Sisters of the Desert Moon belly dancers. I will admit that I enjoyed watching some of the dancers more than others, but I also heartily admire the grace, talent, and moxie of every woman who shares this beautiful art. I love belly dancing, and not only for the obvious reasons. There's something mysteriously mystical about it that attracts me aside from the physical. However, I draw the line at male belly dancers. Once I saw a man do his thing, complete with the tiny cymbals and flowing Middle Eastern garb. I'm still trying to erase that memory from my mind. Call me sexist, but I say belly dancing is for women. Period.

For a finale all the dancers, young and younger, entertained us to the tune of (if I have the name right), "Walk Like An Egyptian." I loved the purple outfit. Some women were lured out of the audience and joined the Sisters of the Desert Moon. Being dancing impaired, I applauded their courage. I was prepared to cling to the ground with clenched fingers and cry like a baby if there was any attempt to draw a gray-haired bearded geezer into the dancing circle.

During much of the time I was admiring the belly dancers, Laurel was absorbed in admiring dichroic glass jewelery. I left her in almost this exact position, watched the dancing for about ten minutes, and then got worried that Laurel had finished her jewelery browsing and was waiting at the booth with nothing to do. Yeah, right. When I got back she was still immersed in the never-ending fascination of dichroic glass. She got a nice ring and two pairs of earrings for a quite reasonable $50. We then headed to another booth where my capture captured a familiar Husband Sight.

We had never seen Salem's kind of famous Eco Earth globe close up. It is at the end of Riverfront Park, overlooking the fabulously gorgeous Willamette River slough and wetlands/fields, and the fabulously ugly Boise Cascade paper plant that should have been torn down decades ago instead of clogging up the riverfront with industrial unchic buildings. The Eco Earth globe is made of tiles that cover an old metal sphere that was used for something or other in the old days of paper processing. The names of contributors to the project encircle the globe. Sadly, we are not among them. I don't know why. I love to see my name in print, or engraved, so this was a missed opportunity to both support a good cause and stroke my ego.

Going back on my own this afternoon, I couldn't pass up a martial arts demonstration by the nattily attired members of the Ireland ATA Blackbelt Academy in Keizer. The kid on the left is five, I believe; the others breaking (rebreakable) boards just a bit older. They had impressive technigue and discipline for children that age. I started my karate training at age 40. Lucky them to begin just a tad sooner.

After the Tae Kwon Do demonstation I ran into a friend, Rob. He was with a woman who was holding the leash of an insanely large Great Dane. Well, I guess all Great Danes are insanely large, but this one made me want to put a saddle on it and ride off into the sunset to find a herd of cats. I made Rob get down on his knees to make the dog look larger. But that was hardly necessary, as you can see from this Yin and Yang photo of another canine that came up to greet its more massive companion.

My day ended with a pilgrimage to the Daryl Thomas West African Drumming and Dancing Workshop. Daryl had recruited a large group of enthusiastic dancers who twirled and whirled to the hypnotic African beat for a lot longer than I could have imagined, given the heat of the afternoon. Here they are near the end of the dancing, in an appropriately worshipful-looking World Beat Festival pose. I had a great time. All you Portlanders should come down next year and see how much fun Salem can be...on two weekends a year (don't miss the Salem Art Fair July 16-18 either).

Three beautiful Sisters

Yesterday it was easy to fall in love with Three Sisters, they looked so beautiful. This photo was taken at the top of a knoll near Black Butte Resort that I’m pretty sure is called Gobblers Knob. Whatever it’s called, this was a great place to be on one those cool, clear June days in central Oregon that makes you feel, “Everything’s all right with the world so long as there are still places like this.”

It’s Laurel’s double-nickel birthday next Monday. So we started celebrating early with one of her favorite activities, a two-hour Black Butte Stables trail ride. I hadn’t ridden for several years, so I was rusty at deciding what to wear for the occasion.

Black cowboy boots seemed both fashionable and practical, but I went back and forth between black baseball cap and black cowboy hat. I remembered that most of the stable guides wore caps themselves, and I wanted to fit in. However, I ended up thinking, “How often do I ride a horse in central Oregon? If this isn’t the time to wear a cowboy hat, what is?” I think we both made some excellent fashion choices, though my blue sweatshirt looks a bit wimpy.

There were just two other people on the ride, a mother and daughter from the Tiburon area in California who had roots in Oregon. I and my rather stout horse had ended up last in line, while Laurel and her even more rotund steed were behind the woman. I couldn’t hear all of their conversation, but it didn’t take long before Laurel said, “My husband does martial arts too!” At canter time I convinced the guide that my horse was faster than Laurel’s, so for the rest of the ride I followed the woman and chatted with her about martial arts this and that.

She practices a mixed style with lots of ground fighting/jujitsu training, and is going to take her black belt test in the fall. She told me a story, with considerable relish, about how she got to apply some joint lock technique to a jerk in a bar. So here’s a tip: if you’re in some Bay Area watering hole, and you see a petite woman with distinctive flowing hair (as in the photo below), act nice around her. Unless you’re into pain.

I gave her my weblog address and told her I’d post a few photos of our ride. So if you see this, Karate Woman (forgot your name, I’m afraid), forgive me for not asking you and your daughter to turn around when I snapped this picture. Or course, since you didn’t bring a camera and I did, I suppose any photo is better than no photo at all. Next time you’re in Salem, drop by the Pacific Martial Arts dojo on a training day (Tuesday and Thursday 6 pm, Saturday 10:30 am) and make some new marital arts friends.