Good Tidings for All

There's something about a Christmas tree.

It brings together the house in such a way; that it's just too good to be true.

Residents sit together and talk around it. The lights are simple: No tree skirt. No fancy ornaments. Simply a bit of garland, large white lights, and no star.

The dog (Cupcake) plays with Kyle, I talk with Sonja & Andrea about Christmas plans. I should get them some gifts. It's such a great feeling to split a house with people who are so warm and welcoming, and to have them accept you and keep you as an old acquaintance.

The city also looks like Christmas lights. Spanning out across the horizon are warm orange and yellow orbs, lit up for the world to see, as the city wraps up its Tuesday.

I always have a hard time believing that it's actually Christmas time. Especially here in the sopping forests of the Northwest. I've missed the snow, but at least some nights are bitter cold, and waste the energy right out of your breath.

That chill in the air is a subtle reminder of the place I will be returning to on Friday. I fly for Ohio at the break of dawn, and enjoy a Cascade sunrise on my way to Dallas.

These mountains out here are starting to get with me. I'm making roots, finally, in this place. It is trouble, because I now am feeling attached.  This feeling is reinforced by the fact that I've worked so hard to get here. I feel like I've been climbing up the slopes of Mt. Hood to arrive to this point, and I think I'm now above the timberline.

What if I have started to turn? What if I stay out here? What if I keep this awesome killer group of friends I've started to amass? I'm in life now, and nobody is saying I have to go somewhere else...

I've met people who have claimed this area their home. I now know what this place means for others; where I could not see that before. Now I am stuck in a randomly generated sequence of thoughts between where to go next August once my time is done here. 

Warmth.

It's dark out.

The quiet sizzle of the highway simmers outside the library's fifth floor doors.

The urban lights twinkle like distant stars, shimmering through the suspended vapor that hangs in the air.

A kick drum starts! Beats manifest themselves through your headphones, as you recollect the past day. People you've briefly met in passing have lost their coarse outer shell, and offered a concession for the betterment of the group. "There is good in this world" you say to yourself, unbelieving in a feeling of transcendence you haven't felt in a while.

The air turned brisk, the rain came. Winter is here.

But this time you haven't plummeted into the depths of the dark. Or at least not entirely.

Last year you clawed your way out of the pit. God, it took forever, but you did get there. The summer sun most likely had something to do with it as well.

That sun. It is what keeps you going. The direct sunlight felt only one week ago. This time you plan on keeping it held for a little longer, and refusing to let the time change get to you. We invented a way to capture electricity and keep it burning for light. You can use that to keep you going.








Everyone here seems to turn joyfully inward when the rain comes. Its actually kind of enduring. It must be the way people cope. The area grows on me more and more by the day, and maybe it isn't the geography.

I've been using place as an expression for lack of a personal network and support structure. I've been accusing the "local feel" as being the reason for my ills, but I believe it has been the fact that I simply have had to struggle through the first year of a new place. But why was I struggling?

The place does not foster the connections in the ways other places do. But I don't have a reference. I don't know if it is simply the fact that I am in a major urban area, or if it is a strange Northwest phenomenon? The South is never this cold. The Midwest is not this cluttered. The city has never been this awkward, nor the area so segmentunited.

I guess it is the people that make the place, but it is the place that makes the people. Its cyclical, with no discernible beginning or end, nor specific actors to blame. That is the ceaseless mystery of place.

It fascinates me so.

Manufacturing of Place, Identity, and Exploration

I know that "manufacturing" is a long word, but it makes the most sense to use in this context. Manufacturing is the process of creation of new material, whether it be physical, mental, or emotional. We manufacture things all the time. It is the constant pulses of our brains which write and re-write to lead us to think and create.

All I can do is smile. The time among old friends, reminiscing about the long concluded days, makes me think about all of the things that are going on, and how to make sure we recognize that our thoughts are manufactured. That we are aware of the constant bias our mind employs against us and our memories.

The songs we sing; the media we watch; the books we read. Many (if not all) of these include the descriptors and qualifiers to why we go to where we go. Place is a hugely important and essential piece of the human condition.

I once had a friend in High School who listened to the Augustana and got me into the band. They have this beautiful song called "Boston" and it got me thinking about how much of our world is manufactured.

The media constructs the environment of what we think about where. So many stereotypes and truths are formed by the simple images and presentations of what we are given on a daily basis. It is what our mind does with those is where it matters.

Our minds are such beautiful machines. While we may be fed images, sounds, and video of our world, but only we can interpret what it all means, and what we will do with it. We go out to explore, exhume, and experience. And how you go about doing that is exactly what matters.

There is no "right" or "wrong" way to experience a place. The only important aspect is to pay attention to "how" you experience it. Stop and realize exactly what it is you are seeing, what you may not be seeing, and how/if you'd like to see everything you can.

I was in Spartanburg, South Carolina to conduct a VISTA training for a friend and her VISTA team, and I felt exactly at home. I fell in love with the town then and there, and vowed I would live there. What is it that makes me lust after a new place the first time I see it? That didn't happen with Vancouver or Portland? Maybe it is because I knew I would stay?

Homecoming has become a special time for me. You do something again, it becomes tradition, right?

Visiting the college for the second time provided closure. The fact that I did not know anyone there. That I was not going back. It was a distant place to be recorded in the halls of memory that are my neurons and synapses.



So where do I belong? Am I going to be living segments of life upon the film of 80 odd years I'm supposed to live? Permanence is a terrifying thing, but I feel as though it is the only way I can be happy. I don't like living on bridges, but my introduction to the "real world" has been exhausting, and I don't know if I'm willing to give it another shot. It feels as though my roots have been stretched to their limit, and that two-thousand miles is simply too far for them to stretch.

Maybe I'll be a touring plant, visiting back to the only soil that can hold me from time to time to revitalize myself. Journeying drains people, and I guess now that we are out of the time span of months, we will move into the extended adventures of years.

A touring plant slowly putting the pieces into place to see what fits, and what doesn't. The bridges aren't quite in view yet, but I know they are coming, so maybe I should just enjoy the ride until they rise over the horizon, and work with them then.

Long Beach and Adventures

This is what my car was meant for. Riding down the country roads, out to the Pacific down some unknown highway.

The City of Astoria from the Astoria Column

Astoria & Where the Columbia Meets the Ocean

Meeting people is an art highly sought after, and rarely found. We have taken on a new housemate for a couple of months, and on Saturday she and I traveled out to the Pacific. I decided to go see the Long Beach peninsula this time round because it was an area I have never seen before.

I've been on the inside of Willapa Bay and seen the Long Beach peninsula from the east, but the lure of the Pacific ocean lay right across that small ridge I always had in the distance.

The View from North of Raymond

The peninsula  has some of the strangest landscapes I have seen in a while. It acts like the mountains until you are well onto the narrow stretch of land. Then, the mountains fall away, and all that is left is open sky, dunes, and beach grass. If you deviate to the west at any point of the departing journey, you tend to hit the ocean quite quickly:

They say Long Beach gets its name because it is the "longest continuous stretch of beach" in the US. There is also a part called "Waikiki Beach" because its sands resemble those found in Hawaii. And the towns themselves remind me of the small beach villages in Florida. They dot the landscape with silly tourist shops and the best seafood places you can find. Fresh catch right that day.

The contrast of the landscapes here is even more dramatic than in Central Oregon. The cliffs intersect with many more beaches, and the water is surprisingly not that cold for this time of year.

The cliffs led to many more spots to swim, if you could get over the surf.

We stopped and had lunch/dinner at a local grille, and thankfully they had boca burgers for myself. Their sauce was to die for, and really made the whole thing "pop" in a certain way.


The drive back was uneventful, other than the fact that we took US 30 back to Longview, and along the way we were able to see the summit of Mount Rainier over the looming Cascade Mountains. After returning, I set out to play a bit of D&D, and came home at 11 PM exhausted. I'm enjoying writing this blog post for everyone, but I figure it is time for dinner and bed. We are moving into a new office tomorrow, and I'm going to need all the rest I can get to setup my new space.

Foo Fighters and Rain

The rain has come once again.

Its been cloudy and rainy for the last three days, and I am awaiting winter's onset once again.

This time around, I am prepared. Well. Not really. But I can sure as hell try.

I find myself listening to "Wake Me Up When September Ends" by Green Day. I don't know why. Just feels like the right mood.

That would be the view from the library where I am writing this right now. The camera's auto-enhance makes it look brighter than it actually is.

September has taken forever. It has literally been one of the longest months I have experienced, and I'm just dreading that it gets over with soon.

Right on key autumn hit. It got cold one night, and it hasn't gotten above 75° since. I kind of enjoyed the beginning of the rain. It was like the cold gray blanket had descended back on our moderately sized valley.

"Our"

I've started identifying with this place.

I wonder if this is what comes with the year end of the cycle. Did it take me that long to get here? It's a tough love. Traveling the path has been less like a smoothly paved North Carolina highway, and more like trudging up one of the taller Cascades on an unimproved gravel road in a four cylinder car. The journey takes forever, and it busts up different parts of your car, but you do get there.

So what is next? Do I want to stay here? I know I still have a year left, but it weighs on me. I don't want to pursue connections if I'm not going to stay here. But I want connections. I can't keep still. I don't want to just "go on" here. I want to explore.

See.

Experience.

Return.

I entice you to ponder the definition of "Home". What does it mean for you?

I can't decide on a definition. Does fate dictate that I will need to settle down eventually? Can a living be made place-hopping? I don't want to be that jerk though.

My reservations are large, but my aspirations are larger. So many things to contemplate. And I have so much to consider. One one hand, I don't like being alone, but on the other hand, I love to travel. I want to see places and become acquainted with them. But I want to see everywhere.

Ohio was the starting place. New England was the taste. Warren Wilson was the honeymoon. Ireland and Barcelona were the extravagant spending. Vancouver is... The doldrums? Painful reflections and life lessons?

Whatever it may be, with the turn of the clouds and the cold I come upon another year here. Lets make the best of it.

Windy Ridge

So if you were to ask me which of the three sides of Mount Saint Helens I liked the most... Well I'd say I like all of them the best for different reasons.

The North side it's for the "easy tourist/learn about the mountain itself" experience. The road is the nicest, the drive is the clearest, but the crowds are the biggest. But the facilities are also really educational, with lots to do for families.

The South side is for the adventurers. The ones who want to get out and play around the mountain in nature. The roads here are half the time gravel, but the experiences are twice the fun. You get to descend into an old lava tube cave with nothing but a gas powered lamp, hike in a basalt valley with a one person width swinging suspension bridge as the end reward, or even climb the mountain itself.

Finally, there is the East side. This is the side for awe and inspiration. It is by far the farthest out, but gets you the closest to the mountain. When you pull up to the final overlook, Windy Ridge, you and your car are literally three miles from the start of the crater. Each lava dome is clearly visible, and you can see where the volcano has started to rebuild itself.

On the way up, you get great views of Mount Adams to the east, and Mount Hood to the south. The road is a mix between pavement and rubble, but it makes the journey that much more valuable. The forests are old growth, interrupted by the sudden decimation of the 1980 eruption.

You get to drive into the pumice plain, and your car sails among the sticks of seared trees and the sea of downed timber.

The half barren mountaintops are like two sides of the same coin, the west facing slopes gone to bedrock, the east facing slopes, spared from 1300 degree mudslides.

You can even see and visit the famous Spirit Lake, once home to the Mount Saint Helens Lodge, which is now under 250 feet of earth and rock. The lake itself still has the log mat, still floating about from the 1980 explosion.

I sat and thought (call it meditated?) for a while at the top of Windy Ridge. I sat in the pumice and ash, and took in the marvel of being so close to something of such immeasurable power. And being surrounded by others which are much older, and contain much more than the geological youngster of Mount Saint Helens.

I even saw the colossal Rainier off in the distance, holding the title of grandest of them all. Rising 14,411 feet in the air, it is plainly visible between two mountain peaks.

So here I am. Sitting among giants. I still can't fathom it to this day.

What more can I say? Pixels cannot capture the amount of beauty in this world.

Contradictory Landscapes

So, what about a landscape that isn't supposed to be there? What do you do then?

Let me explain.

I'll wrap up a little of my recent experiences through examination of landscapes:

So there are landscapes that exist which are meant to exist. I've visited a couple of those in the last couple of weeks:

The drive from Aberdeen along the Pacific Coast.

The pacific coast.

A panorama from a lookout at Gray's Harbor

Alder's Flat in Mt. Hood National Forest. (Auto-Awesome Photo, just giving full disclaimer)

More of Alder's Flat

Entrance to Willamete National Forest

Sunset in Salem

And of course, the catalyst, in the Steigerwald National Wildlife Refuge

So what makes these "correct" landscapes? is it because of their pretty scenery? Their forested hills around them? How about their inclusion of nature?

Well all of those help a landscape, but none of them really make or break a landscape in the grand scheme of things. It is really the fact that the areas of the landscapes in the pictures "fit". They run together with what is around them, with most things flowing well into and out of the scene.

This weekend, I discovered Yakima. A lonely valley in the middle of the high desert, turned Garden of Eden by the modern power of irrigation.

Its strange. You are driving through the high desert in central Washington. You've seen it all before, the endless plains of scrub brush and tender dry grass, resisting the massive wind the best in can. Just waiting under a Red Flag warning to eradicate all before its hellish fire.

So far, so good.

The plains turn into mountains, the mountains into barren hills. Then, as soon as you round a corner:

BAM!

Fields of green, yellow, and brown stretch out throughout the valley below. It is a valley, full of the richest vegetables, fruits, and buildings you can imagine. The valley stretches out beyond what the mind can imagine. Off in the distance are faint, hazy hills, yellow and brown as the previous ones you were just driving through. But halfway up the sides, a dark green is visible. Those are fruit trees and they stretch up just as far as the water can go.

The valley is built on this source. Water. It needs it. It feeds off of it. It produces with it. Without it, it would be just another desert valley, with a river running through it.

But why? That is my ever present question. Why is it that this valley, and this river, gave rise to one of Washington's greatest food producing regions? Why is it that this place was settled on as that place? I don't really know. How much water does it use? This land, I don't think it was meant to be food production, I think it was meant to be a subtle little pocket of high desert river life. So what have we made/gained/lost with this development?

Its weird. I've never been in a place that isn't meant to belong there. All of my landscapes have flowed, fit together, and transitioned into different settings quite well. This place comes upon you as the perfectly created wonderland of local food. But was it supposed to be that way?

Homesickness

I really need to stop longing for a culture I am content with. I need to embrace the low points of the journey, and enjoy the luscious crops of the fertile valleys.

I thought that my life was built upon adventure, and seeking out the more to see. The irresistible drive to continue onward until I've circled around full. I guess that isn't the way it is supposed to be.

I do not want to fall into the conservative mindset of "conserve what you have, it always works", and if it hasn't been conserved, go back to it. That must be the stubborn Midwestern kicking back in.

I miss my home.

I do have a home. My base of operations is Thurston, Ohio. While my family may not live there anymore, it is the town I identify with the most. I grew up there. I learned there. I experienced the first threshes of life there. Identified my loves, explored my passions, and got the hell out, only to discover it again once I had left, and once they had left.

I do have a home. My lyrical muse lies in the fields adorning the mountains of the Swannanoa Valley. The sweltering humid heat of the morning fog makes me pine to live those experiences again. Marching through the forest every morning to greet the academic rigor of the day, only to end the week in a celebration of Mario Kart and Magic the Gathering.

My method of travel is the Catalyst. She travels with me between all points known and unknown. She is my temporary home, gracious enough to host me on the long journeys through the desert, over the tallest mountains on the continent, and between those two points where I am solidly anchored.

Out here though, there is no home. There is only a drift of the shells of a community. It's too big to have a cohesive whole, but too small to have specific individual parts. There is no definition here, it's just like an impressionist painting that has been rained on.

All the natural area cannot fix this place. No amount of rare summer storms, humid warm nights, nor fields of far off crops can bring me back enough to want to stay. The noise is too precise, the hum of the highway too close, and the entrapment of the houses too focused.

The only thing that comforts me tonight is the far off sound of the port, with its clattering rails slowly moving towards cargo ships, and the soft chirps of few lone crickets somewhere in the neighborhood. But even that is sometimes lost in the chatter of cars and wavering voices and settlements around me.

It's been a while since I've walked the streets at night. I do miss the semi-quiet embrace of the dark. It's almost like a velvet blanket, wrapping me close. But oh how it makes me feel even more lost.

The rows of houses seem so comforting, but it reaches the uncanny valley quite quickly. It rolls down the mountainside, ever destined to that floor where embrace becomes envelopment.

Yet I sigh. One cannot let these kind of things get too close to the soul. I like to think of this place as a cartographic maze; a labyrinth which spirals into its self, but cannot seem to find a way out. The identity of the suburban town does not retreat after completing its journey to its core. It simply keeps looping in circles unable to make its final, defining connection.

And so I am stuck here, listless, wandering and observing. I know there is more for the eye to see, but it is difficult trying to live in the happy medium. A friend told me quite quaintly: "It's a strange town. There is no access to life as in the urban area, nor is there the solitude of a rural area. It truly is a 'sub'-urban area, with a happy medium for many, but an off-kilter balance that cannot swing in either direction for us."

The Map of Trees and Fields Through the Houses

Today I wandered.

I found the blurry boundary between county and city. The spot where the suburbs are slowly creeping outward, through the remaining fields, slowly popping up, and colonizing with its shaped topiaries and curved lanes. Planned everything. Sidewalks. Roads. Lots. Playgrounds. The monotonous houses only broken by a reversed room or a bend in the road.

Yet, I felt more at home here then I have within the city. It reminded me of Pickerington. A new growth on the land, not quite realizing how to fit in, but not unwelcomed either.

Spread. Radials. Loops and Twists. I guess that is what living in a suburb is like? I never have, but I've seen them enough to guess.

Beside the houses were fields of clover and alfalfa. Nearby was a dairy barn, with an active sign warning against cows crossing the road. The sun shone, and for a second I glimpsed the hills of Southern Ohio. I went into an autopilot for my car, instinctively rolling with the well known curves, only to be interrupted by another development, which I wound around.

Eventually I hit the end of the road at a private gate to what amounted to a super mansion in the valley below. That is the thing here, the roads always end. There is no wrapping around to take a left at another T in the road. No curves winding down the old canal route. The only roads that don't end are the Interstates. But those are no fun to drive on.

See, in Ohio, you can take one road, and it will keep going until it T's into another road. You can then take that road forever, until it T's with another road. And if you drive around enough, you will loop (albeit it takes about an hour or so in the country).

Here in Washington, the roads just.

There are no convenient roads to take you through the pastures here. There are no "T" signs, only Dead Ends. One road goes on, and on, and on, but no loop to get back. No easy to see grid with county and township roads going on forever. Its a "come back the way you went in" situation, seeing everything twice.

I take large loops whenever I can. I get out whenever I can. But I've been out everywhere my little car can go. I've covered all of the roads that actually continue, and don't just. end. The only loops you can make are in the city blocks cluttered with houses and buildings.

The murky lines marauding around county and city are one of the few reminders. The sliver of agriculture still shining in the narrowing valley of the Columbia is the closest I can get to home.

Settling In.

These past two weeks have felt like a whirlwind which would never end. I've traveled more places, and seen more things, than I ever had expected. I was able to be a kid again, and enjoy the wonders of the natural world with my family; responsibility free.

My grammar let loose, and my silliness resurfaced, and it felt like a true "vacation" for me. I taught and showed, and participated with no previous judgment or anticipation or preparation.

It felt like we were on our summer vacation again, in the tradition of the days when I was a kid.

I don't know exactly what to call my feelings right now. It isn't "normalcy" because this wasn't "normal" but it was content. Enjoyment? Comfort? Familiarity?

Whatever it was, it was so... Unconscious. I was living without realizing it. With no worry or fear. I never realized how quickly two weeks could go by.

Me showing off my feminine side.

Seaside Beach

Mt. St. Helens from an overlook.

St. Helens from the Johnston Ridge Observatory

A nifty Auto-Awesome photo added by Google. I think it looks pretty cool for a kayak shot.

I choose the "Indecisive- Wavering" on the menu, and this is what I got. Classy Vancouver. Classy.

I now am back to the grown-up life, working the 8-5 job, making the money, to pay the rent, to live in the house, to go back to work, to try to make the world a better place. Its a weird thing, being a "grown-up". So many people tell me they haven't grown up, but I think many people's lives fall outside my basic definition of being "grown-up". Being an adult, to me at least, means having to do things all by myself. I wash the dishes, do the laundry, clean the room, buy food, keep up with my well being, all by myself. I never seem to do all that unconsciously. I am always struggling to do those everyday things.

When my family visited, I didn't have to worry about the everyday laborious tasks. They were taken care of for me (thankfully! My mother could have easily had me do laundry, cook dinner, and clean, but she didn't.) I didn't have to worry about the essentials, therefore I could focus on the auxiliaries. The having fun, the running around, the enjoying time with my family. It really brought me back...

Thoughts From a Micro-place

It's amazing how much a spiritual place can rejuvenate the soul.

Today I visited and attended the Unitarian Universalist church here in Vancouver. It's a nice congregation, a bit bigger than the one in Reynoldsburg I use to go to, but the people are just as welcoming, which was a wonderful relief from all the xenophobia I've been experiencing elsewhere.

Being in the church and participating in the ceremonies really brought me back to a happy reality. One where people were so glad to have a new face in the crowd, and a new person to introduce themselves to. And the singing, and the service; it all brought a sense of camaraderie to the faith we all struggle with.

Finding myself renewed when I got back, I proceeded to clean and try to get my computer to work. I spent much of the afternoon with little effort, but because my morning was so great, I really had no reason to be upset.

While I was crawling around on the floor organizing the many crazy cable systems just strewn out about the case, I noticed the bottom of my desk, with its strange dimples on the bottom.

It got me thinking. What if there existed such a thing as a micro-place?

I think that there are such places in the "micro" form. Little areas which have the same categories as "place", and can easily be described using simplified versions of different " place " based ideas.

Take for under my desk for instance. It is a place which I never thought of being anywhere special, but when I was working on my computer, I caught myself thinking: "Huh. Never been here before."

A lot of people have micro-places at their desks or area where they work. Things must be in order and perfect in order to work. (Or not, but still, you can describe the desk using the same terms you may describe a city or neighborhood.)

I feel as though the mind can be a micro-place. You can be out of your mind, or in the right mindset. All these words describing a "place" and how you interact with that place.

And maybe that is what I got out of church last Sunday. A rebalancing of the micro-place we like to call the "mind".

No Place Is Perfect

Place is a funny word. It can mean a state of mind, a physical location, a region. A planet, a person, an emotion.

The sun is setting, and its amazing how much chillier it is getting in the building where I am. The warm radiant blanket begins to slip away under the horizon. It makes the mountains in the distance clearer though, as the particulates no longer have to reflect as much of the rays as they go beneath the land.

This is a place. A place full of rain, and green, one with snow capped mountains, and quirky settlements.

The places you visit in your lifetime are worth thousands of words. But not nearly enough to satisfy the urge to see more. There is something beautiful in every place. Something to be appreciated, sought out and acknowledged, even in the "worst" of cases.

A mountain top removal mine shows our amazing ability to manipulate our environment and technology to adapt. A natural preserve shows our respect for what exists, and our desire to keep some part of the world stable in the ever changing landscape. Deserts may look empty, but under all that dust and shrub lie an entire ecosystem of plants, animals and microbes. Yet the very basis of forests rest upon the solid yet ever changing rock, only a recollection of ages past long ago.

There are infinite places. Geography dictates that something is a part of something else, until you get to the elementary particles and the outer limits of the observable universe. Yet even those are made of "things", even if it is only colorful descriptors and the hypothetical unknowns.

Yet, I always long for the base. For those rolling hills of the heartland, ripe with crops and a sky horizon so great that it beckons you onward. That indescribable patchwork of farms, forests, and houses. The iconic Americana picture. Flags lining a street of a small town with no stoplights. Kids playing out and about in the yards, as the tractors roll through digging the fertile earth. There is no place like it.

Then there are the people you love in those places too. Some of them you get sick of being around, but you love them none the less. And some of your best friends, they hail from those mountains and fields as well. And you can't get it out of your mind the time you went back for Christmas, and how that made you realize how much you missed the place where you grew up, and the place where your loved ones resided.

How I miss that landscape so. The adventures, the craziness, the great times. It's amazing how strong this urge can be sometimes.

Backwoods and Beaches (Dunes Added for Good Measure)

There is something inherently romantic (as in nostalgia and fascination/relaxing, not person to person romantic, although for some that is true) about the idea of a vacation at the beach. The sand and the ocean just signal relaxation; it's like a fundamental quality of the objects themselves. And it doesn't even have to be sunny and seventy-five. Sixty and overcast still works just as well.

It's amazing; the coastal mountains. They remind me so much of the Appalachians back east. Covered with trees, rolling forever. They have a sort of tightness about them, but they don't tower like the Cascades.

Driving through them, there is one thing that the Appalachians do not have: An ocean on the other side.

Coming upon it, you don't quite get it at first. There is a huge river, and it just keeps going, and going, and eventually it just widens out to the endless sea.

I would say I have a love/hate relationship with the sea, but in the Northwest you get the best of both worlds. Usually, or at least in the East, you pick either ocean, or mountains. But here they run right into each other, creating some of the most stunning scenery. Little sections of beach, coves hiding countless wonders, with cliffs to be scaled, and water so cold it creates the exhilarating release of worries and life, and brings you back to the present, while letting go of all of your past troubles.

At the same time, the hike to get to the beach, the emptiness of it all, it demands reflection. That is what purpose the dunes serve.

Imagine you set up your camp, settle in, and for the first half of the next day you run around, not knowing a damn thing about these "dunes" everyone raves about. After hiking a quarter of a mile through the woods, all of a sudden, you come upon the first dune, kids scaling it. Instantly I got the feeling of driving through the open and unknown terrain of the west, with its large mountains and extending plains:

I couldn't believe my eyes. I quickly, although with much strain, climbed the first one, only to be greeted by a completely awesome (using the literal meaning of the word) landscape.

Amazing. Simply amazing. I instantly fell in love. I had to explore more. I simply took off, through the sand, and towards the looming ocean in the distance. Armed with only my bare feet and my water bottle, by god, I would get there.

After trekking across the sand, and through the forest, and over more dunes, I came upon it. The Pacific Ocean. I had been here before, but this time, it was different.

I tried explaining to a friend on the way back the whole idea (albeit messed up) of Easterners and our gratification from Manifest Destiny. I experienced it when I visited Seaside and Astoria last summer, but it was more pronounced this time. I literally was trekking with bare feet through a forest with pine cones and splinters littering the ground, before I could get to the ocean. There was more of a conquest feeling about it. I fought my way to that ocean, and when I reached it, it was beautiful.

But those dunes were calling again. The endless expanse of sand and wind, ever shifting in the most unique landscape I have ever seen. The sun began to set, and it was time to trudge back into the shifting hills.

Once found by friends, I camped on top of a dune for a bit, and caught the sunset. Caught the freaking sunset. Pictures can't do it justice:

Finally, I have seen the sunset over the Pacific, and completed that great feat of watching the sunrise over the Atlantic, and watching the sunset over the Pacific. Again, the Manifest Destiny kicking in.

The long ride home consisted of wobbling around for the first hour of the trip in the passenger seat, then slamming a Dutch Bros. coffee which consisted of six shots of espresso and drudging through two traffic backups around Portland. I am still exhausted, especially from swimming in the frigid ocean for an hour and a half yesterday, but it was all well worth it. Oh god, it was so cold, but so fun.

I guess I am becoming quite the world traveler now. I've swam in the Atlantic & Gulf, the Pacific, and the Mediterranean. What a place we live in. Where to in the next couple of years? Who knows? I'd like to travel to Alaska, or the Southwest to experience the desert, and I would kill to go abroad more. I guess the only problem is I'm getting tired of doing it all on my own, and this weekend showed me that travel with friends can be one of the best experiences in the world. Who wants to join?