The Case for Summer

June is finally here and it is officially summer in the northern hemisphere. I am over here rejoicing in my most favorite season. Spring spent a few years in that top position because it meant the end of winter. But now (and forever more) summer reigns supreme. Here’s why:

• Sunshine: I have lived in the Pacific Northwest for the past two and half years, a place famous for its rainy weather. However, it is not the rain that bothers me. What really reaches into the soul and brings me down to the depths of hell is a PNW winter, where direct sunlight disappears for months at a time, what feels like endless overcast skies. Summer means the return of sunshine, even in the rainy, dark PNW.

• Warmth: give me sweat over shivers any day. The heat gives me extra energy to move and exercise. Besides, summer is the only time my hands and toes thaw out from their icy norm.

• Summer clothes: summer clothing is better than all other clothing. Fight me about it. Tank tops and shorts and sandals all the way. The more skin exposed for the sun to kiss the better. Throw on some sunglasses and let’s get outside.

• Swimming: open water swims are some of my most favorite activities. I adore the vastness I feel suspended in a deep column of water. I love swimming from shoreline to shoreline. The way my lungs feel so powerful and strong after swimming is unmatched by any other sport I have found.

• Summer reading: winter reading is a close second, but summer reading wins out because it often takes place on a beach or in a lawn chair or a picnic blanket in a grassy field. Winter reading is great because its cozy and often curled up by a fire. But, summer reading is versatile - it is reading that gets thrown into a knapsack and carried with you everywhere.

Who else is excited to get outside this summer? What is your favorite season and why? What is on your summer reading list? Let me know if the comments below.

An Ode to Climbing (and joy)

Recently, I have taken up the sport of bouldering. I’ve been thinking all week about what I’d like to write about for this Monday’s blog post and bouldering is just about the only thing I can think about these days. It is one of the greatest comforts and constants I have in my life now, in a time when many things are changing and a cross-country move this summer is looming in the background of everything.

In many ways, it feels like all roads have lead to bouldering. Sports and I have had a complicated relationship in the past. So, it took a while to get here.

I began playing (team) sports at a young age. First, I played soccer. Running up and down the field, breathless, always exhausted, praying for the coach to pull me. “Please, put me in time out. I just want to rest and hang out with my grandpa,” who came to almost every game. Next, was softball. I played softball for probably six years and was decent at the game until I hit puberty and became clumsy and self-conscious. I originally played shortstop and was a perfectly adequate batter. As I aged into a teenager, I was plopped into the outfield, right field, where balls would seldom fly. I was also the player for whom all the kids would groan when it was my time to bat. They knew, at bat, I often crumbled under the pressure of letting my team down. I played exactly one season of basketball. On this team, I arrived as a complete beginner to a team that had been playing for years. My teammates never passed the ball in a game, not once. For the whole season basketball seemed like just more endless running. Back and forth. Back and forth. Forever.

Sports in middle and high school looked akin to an endless void. I traded in those activities for drama and band and chorus. I had a strong disdain for any sport, really. In a lot of ways, I thought I would never play sports again of any kind. It wasn’t until college, ironically, when I was forced into taking physical education, that I practiced sports voluntarily. In college, I took classes in swimming in running and soon found myself running in 5k and 10k races, eventually completing a half-marathon and also dabbling in sprint triathlons.

I ran for several years after college before finding yoga and realizing that I actually hated running. Turns out I could get that elusive “runner’s high” from other more palatable activities. Now, yoga is hardly a sport. But, it did get me into my body in similar ways as sports intend to do and yoga was also the key that opened the door for me to try team sports again. Non-competitive sports like yoga and hiking helped me to feel strong, confident, and centered. So, when I was invited to play pickup games of sand volleyball with friends, I acquiesced and actually enjoyed myself.

I never considered I would get into climbing because of an intense fear of heights that I have carried since I was a small child. And yet, I fell instantly in love with it. I fell in love with the way it feels to have your whole body up against a wall, experiencing every muscle contract and work in unison to keep you from falling. With the fear of nearing the top, experiencing the room spin around you, heart thumping, mind racing and having no choice but to suck it up and find some way down. I fell in love with how, when you are in the gym surrounded by problems (bouldering routes are called problems), nothing else exists. It’s just you and your hands and feet and the wall. Your only job is to solve (send) the problems you are able to solve (and to save the ones you cannot until next time).

In a lot of ways, bouldering has become a metaphor for how I am striving to live my life. I desire to follow whatever lights me up inside: writing, climbing, spending time in nature. I spend a lot of time examining my fears about living a life I truly love. I realize I have no choice but to suck it up and find a way back to balance. I practice the art of knowing which problems are mine to solve. And I realize that sometimes things find you in the perfect time and it’s okay to get a little lost in that joy.

Flowers in the Forest

It’s mid May in this part of the world, yet it already feels like spring is giving way to summer. As I had walked through the forests in the nature park where I work, my reverent excitement at the newness of emergence begins to yield into a steady summer awe. The early yellow bloomers have gone. Pops of color no longer solicit my eyes and heart to delight in novelty. Where once the plants had space to stretch, where each new species to emerge had a temporary moment in the spotlight, now a dense and green thickness abounds. Yes, the forest floor has transformed.

Flowers can live short lives. Those growing in open areas, scorched by the sun, may only hang around a few days before they wither and die. Flowers can also stick around for some time.

In my first spring in Oregon, I learned about the trillium. The flower is of some importance in local culture, its likeness ornamentally used in park logos and its name affixed to trail loops. I knew the name before I knew the flower. The first one I spotted that spring in a local park by my home had me exclaiming as if it were a famous celebrity. I later learned that the cream white petals of the trillium turn crimson when they senesce and die.

It has been a difficult couple of weeks for me, my spouse, and his family. We lost both of his grandmothers (Gram and Mema) five days apart and just before Mother’s Day. The day after Gram died, I took a hike in Forest Park with a friend and happened across several senescing trillium. I couldn’t help but think of them as metaphors for grief.

Just as in the forest, in my heart now the exuberant delights of spring have faded into thickness, to density. I feel everything extra deeply. I think of Gram and Mema as the flowers who have stuck around, both living into their 90s, and feel gratitude for knowing and loving them. I contemplate the burst of life often felt when experiencing the death of a loved one, as if the volume of the world has been turned on high. Whites transforming to crimson hues. Their deaths momentarily painting the world, their lives always remembered.

Beneath My Hiking Shoes

Those of you who have done some hiking in the Pacific Northwest or who consider themselves naturalists in any capacity may be wondering why on earth I would highlight a picture of poison oak for this particular blog. Poison oak, like its east-coast cousin poison ivy, is a much hated plant for the oil it contains. This oil, called urushiol, inflicts nasty, itchy, painful rashes on its sufferers. Well, the reasoning for the picture begins with a different story: the story of a hiking excursion.

I took a mid-week solo trip to the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge on Wednesday. I had visited this particular area hiking once before (in winter) with a friend and found myself so impressed with the majesty of the ecosystem that I knew a spring return was warranted. After all, it is currently wildflower season in the Pacific Northwest. I still only know a few species of wildflower by sight. So, there was indeed much to observe and to learn.

This particular area boasts vast open grasslands with boulders that seemingly have been dropped from the sky, mixed with small patches of oak forest that pop up anywhere water flows. In winter, the grasses die and the wind paints golden brush strokes over the near empty landscape. On a clear day, trees stand solitary and silhouetted against ocean blue skies. The eastern part of the gorge is known to locals as an oasis of sun from the gloomy clouds of Portland metro. The Labyrinth, as it is known, called my name for many months before I took the trip. I found myself often scanning the weather forecasts around Cascade Locks and Hood River, Oregon for signs of ideal conditions that coincide with my off days. Thus is the life and heart of a hiker.

On this particular Wednesday, the conditions were just right and I had a juicy new audiobook to devour on the three hour round-trip car ride: My Stroke of Insight by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. The books I select for my solo hiking trips are often chosen for the themes they may weave into my subconscious. In this way, I gift myself notions to ponder during the hike. I choose them and my hikes carefully. The entire experience is one that I craft for self care, growth, and reflection. I then take my notebook with me and find an ideal place to write. In this case, the reprieve of sun (and freshness, inspiration) from the extended darkness of winter felt necessary and so I was off.

For those of you who have not yet had the pleasure of reading My Stroke of Insight, I will not give away too much. But, I will explain a little about the premise of the book and what it meant to me. The book is written by a neuroscientist who had a stroke in her mid-thirties and who was able to study the deterioration of her brain from the inside out. The book also details her long recovery and the process of relearning to process information through the left hemisphere of her brain. Much of the book focuses on the revelations she experienced as a result of experiencing the world almost exclusively through right brain consciousness and the feeling of connection and oneness that resulted.

For much of my hike, I was fixed on this idea of acknowledging the multitudes that exist within and around our bodies. I let my right brain take over my experience of the hike, noticing thoughts as they came, as if in a walking meditation. At one point, I happened across some poison oak as I took a trail cutoff toward the base of a waterfall. My bare legs grazed the plant before I had the notion to even notice where I walked.

Now, I am immune to the oils of poison ivy and have been since I was a young child. However, I did not know yet with certainty if that same immunity applied to poison oak. Even if it did, I knew better than to be nonchalant about the oils, which could transfer to my loved ones who are not immune.

Deep in a state of observation, this encounter with poison oak got me thinking about the plant in new ways. As my steps became more and more mindful, as I carefully placed each foot for the rest of the walk, I realized the power of this plant to force us humans to consider how we steward the land. What does stewardship look like when every step we take compacts the soil? We are often unconsciously crushing life forms beneath our feet as we walk, plants and insects and the like. How might this plant, poison oak, be a teacher for a more mindful approach to life and to what lies beneath our hiking shoes?

On this hike, I developed a new appreciation for poison oak. Perhaps aided by my immunity, but more likely aided by the wonderful insights of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor and her enlightening book. I stopped at one point to admire the plant and took the photograph I featured in this blog post. I hope reading this helped you to consider the world a little differently too.

April 2019 Books

I have set a reading goal for the year of 60 books and, so far, I have read 21. I set this overall goal early in the year after having a conversation with my friend and fellow writer, Cheryl. I realized that I could be committing to finishing way more books per year. Previously, I would let a lot of books go half read. In order to meet this goal and to challenge myself this term to set up a curriculum while I am not taking creative writing courses, I have assigned myself the following books for the month of April:

• Not Even Wrong by Paul Collins (nonfiction, memoir) - finished

• Whip Smart by Melissa Febos (nonfiction, memoir) - half finished

• Ghost Fishing edited by Melissa Tuckey (poetry anthology) - have not begun

• Peak Performance by Brad Stulberg (self-help, audiobook) - nearly finished

• Crushing It by Gary Vaynerchuk (self-help, audiobook) - finished, although started earlier in the year

This first month’s “curriculum” is lacking nonfiction craft. My intention this month was to focus on reading the published work of some creative writing professors as well as to finish off some of the audiobooks that have been on my list at the library.

I will be the first to admit that I do not shy away from self-help books and I am also not ashamed to read them (although most of the time I am listening to self-help books on my commute versus reading them). I have anywhere from an hour to hour and a half round trip commute four days a week and I often prefer to fill that time with learning new concepts rather than listening to music. Having books or podcasts to look forward to has exponentially improved my commute experience. I have nothing at all against music, but my mind is often hungry for new information and growth. I often find myself listening to the Rich Roll Podcast when I am not devouring new self-help books.

This April, I am also challenging myself to submit at least one essay or poem to submittable for publication. I have an entire “writing manifestation” checklist to check off which includes this challenge as well as “receive my first acceptance for publication” and “receive my first rejection for publication.” So, either way the submission goes I get to check off two items, one for submitting and one for getting either an acceptance or rejection. I am always reminding myself that failure and rejection are part of the process. What’s the most important is that you actually go out there are do that damn thing!

For May’s curriculum, I am planning to add in at least one book in nonfiction craft. I would also like to include a book of poetry a month and prioritize more nature writing and writers of color in general. If anyone has any nonfiction or poetry suggestions, please feel free to connect with me here. I would love to hear them.