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.