May 2004
10 posts
Sometimes I almost don’t want to write about little happenings around this quiet valley I live in, for the simple fact that I’m sure someone out there is saying “Get outta here… either you live in Wonderland, or you are making this stuff up.”
It is true that I live in a sort of Wonderland (at least to me..), but I certainly would never have a reason to make anything...
For the fourth straight day in a row, the valley has been waltzed by thunderstorms. Not the kind that simply rumble and threaten rain… but the ones that boom so loud the windows rattle, and the cloudbursts pour furiously with each flash of lightning.
Yesterday’s storm was no exception.
I crawled up onto the bed with my dog for a nap, and woke to the sound of rumbling. I stared...
I shouldn’t confess what I just indulged in for lunch today… but I’m going to anyway. The taste of it is imprinted within my senses, and I’m still humming from the sheer guilty pleasure from the experience.
My friend Amy (who was my traveling companion in England. Yes, Amy and Aimee - running wild in the UK) was in town today. We decided to venture to the touristy...
On May 18th, 1980 - my mother and I were in our front yard. It was Sunday morning, and she was getting an early start on the yard work that day. Being 9 years old at the time, I was getting an early start on playing with my dog Chinook.
I was standing on the little slope near the Snowball tree that mom had carefully sculpted throughout the years. Chinook was rooting through the orchard grass...
Another treasure discovered on my trek to the Pacific Ocean. A book called Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman.
Each chapter is a hypnotic dream in which Time is explained in every imaginable and impossible facet. Interspersed throughout this are occasional breaks where we see Einstein himself, in simple moments of every day life.
There is nothing ordinary about this book, however. It...
Last night we had a fantastically loud thunder storm sweep through the valley.
I could see it coming when I left work. The sky had grown dark and surly, with black clouds sending veils of silver rain onto the hilltops all around.
By the time I pulled in the driveway at home, the wind was whipping through the dogwood tree, scattering it’s white petals across the freshly mowed yard. The...
I now know why Hendry David Thoreau said “The bluebird carries the sky on his back…”
As I was sitting on an overlook high above the valley, my husband was off in the distance photographing wild lupine against the outline of some trees scorched in a forest fire. It was another postcard blue sky day.
I was looking across at the jagged mountain peaks, wondering if the bears were...
Making a mental list of errands that needed running, I ducked under the blooming dogwood tree and was about to get into my Jeep when I realized I hadn’t checked the mailbox yet.
I glanced over my shoulder to the plain green box jutting up off the rock wall by the road. Ehh… why bother. If there is something in there, it will most likely be bills, junk mail, or at the very...
Whenever I am heading down the road en route to the Oregon Coast, I have a deep sense of ‘going home’. Strange, really - as I’ve never lived there… and in fact am quite satisfied with the place I’ve dug my roots in. But going to the ocean feels like returning to a different sort of place. Something deeper in the recognition I feel when I finally step out of the...
In short….
There was little wind, and deep blue skies that had not yet been bleached by summer.
The green throated hummingbirds had claimed the five mile hike through lush forest to Cape Lookout for their own, and one had to watch carefully to avoid stepping on the banana slugs. The whales made cameo appearances at the Cape Meares lighthouse, when the sun was high enough to turn the...
