8 posts tagged “claire gebben”
"Day One!" My 18-year-old son George said to me last Monday as we hopped back in the car.
For him, it actually was Day One. We'd just climbed Wilderness Peak, elevation 1,595, with 35 lb. packs on our backs, training for our summit attempt on Mt. Rainier on June 26th. George just graduated from high school, and is headed for UW. It's been a crazy, hectic ride at the end of his senior year. Now, finally, with all that behind him, he's ready to focus on the next big hurdle--Mt. Rainier.
To state the obvious, I'm not 18, I'm 50. His Day One was my Day One Hundred. I'd been working up to this moment over long, arduous months, ever since we signed up with RMI Guides. I'd thought I had gotten into decent shape, what with the jogging, the bicycling, the yoga, the hiking. This morning, I'd felt ready when we'd reached the trailhead to Wilderness Peak, like I'd come a long way, like my son and I would chat happily together as we cruised down the trail. Within minutes, he'd left me in the dust. I didn't see him again till I got back to the car.
So we're climbing Mt. Rainier this week, a young colt of a kid and an old mare of a woman. Earlier, I'd imagined I would blog my training, my thoughts, my aspirations. But there just wasn't time. I thought at least I'd blog this week starting June 15 (Day One). But I've learned there's a reason hikers don't write all that much -- they're out there in the woods, hiking!
Instead, here's our last training week, an atypical one, to say the least. I felt like we were on a backpacking trip while living out of our house. Monday we climbed Wilderness Peak, Tuesday we climbed West Tiger, then George was sick of being held up by his mom, so Wednesday I hiked Coal Creek Trail alone (he went jogging). Thursday, we climbed Mt. Si and that's all the more we could do--we haven't been out hiking since, because they tell you to rest up, to store your energy for the big ascent. Today (Sunday), I take Vivian to Cle Elum for horse camp. Tomorrow, George and I head out to Rainier. Think of us Thursday morning, early! Hopefully, we'll be above it all, at 14,410 feet, gazing out over the planet.
Just to let you know, there's about a 50-percent chance we won't even get to go, based on capricious mountain weather. So keep your fingers crossed for sunny skies, and we'll let you know how it went when we return.
I read an article in the Sunday New York Times, (May, 2007), about a publishing house that plans to pare down the literary classics into succinct, easy-to-chew morsels, editing out all the 'boring' parts. To celebrate the occasion, well-known authors were invited to suggest how they'd pare down certain classics. One of the many authors who delighted in the exercise was Stephen King, who reduced the 800+ pages of Gone with the Wind to a bit of dialogue and a two sentence paragraph.
At the very least, it's discouraging. What does that say to potential authors like me? That all my storytelling, all the word pictures I've labored to craft, the sensual imagery, the stern, courageous self-editing, has the potential to be dismissed as not worth the effort? Still, I take the risk.
Hey, guess what!? I got published!
Mercer Island Reporter article, May 7, 2008
I went on the MLK Day march this January. I loved the mix of skin colors--all shades of brown, red, yellow, white. I wondered what Dr. King himself would have thought about the cacophony of signs:
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Buddhists for Peace Let Freedom Ring, End Racism, Poverty & War
Stop HIV: Get Involved West Seattle Neighbors for Peace and Justice
Veterans for Peace Immigrants Workers Taxpayers--we are human, too.
Impeach Bush Kucinich for President Jobs for Justice
Put MLK on this $20 bill Stop Racism Now! Obama for President
Palestinians have a dream, too: End Apartheid! I Miss America
Alternative Schools Iranian Americans for Equality, Peace, Justice
Stop the ICE Raids, no more deportation Freedom Socialist Party
Stop demolition of Palestinian houses John Edwards for President
Class struggle against the imperial war machine: stop the illegal and unjust war
Jobs, housing and healthcare are human rights No More War!
We are all born free and equal Seattle Longshoremen march for Justice
Seattle University Black Student Union Street Pavers/Tunnel Workers
Public Health Workers say troops out now! Patricia Troncoso Pobles/Political Prisoner
No Iraq War Nuclear Deterrence is Terrorism Jobs with Justice
Kadima: a Progressive Jewish Community Human Needs Not War
Justice works: restore dignity, restore democracy, restore the right to vote
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That's just how we looked, moving down Rainier Avenue, one big, random chunk of marchers carrying a jumble of messages and signs. We all seemed to have our agendas: one non-marcher even displayed a personal vendetta from a pedestrian overpass: Boycott Money Tree.
It's at the core of everything now, so many voices, so diluted, so peripheral. We assembled, and with our signs and calls and cheers, we carried forward our individual, determined ideals with congenial dignity. Would Dr. King be proud? Is it what he intended? I like to believe he would have hoped his message was not consigned to a peripheral, once-a-year celebration. I like to believe he hoped for real, systemic, permanent change. Clearly, his vision is not yet realized.
I have a brachiopod on my dresser from the last time I visited Ohio. It's not a prime specimen--both its wingtips are broken off--but still, I love to hold it in the palm of my hand and remember "Fossil Hill," an eroding creekbank along the ravine near my childhood home.
Recently, I came across another eroding creekbank at the mouth of Scalzo Creek. I happened along it by hiking the Primrose Trail: A waterfall cascades down a wall of rock to join Coal Creek there, and along the top of the ridge, majestic trees tower above the landscape. From the obvious soil erosion under the cedars, I could tell that many hikers had visited the place, climbing the sides of the waterfall for the heady view. The ground is literally crumbling away beneath the tree roots, a progression that will eventually make the trees fall over, but for now, offer a tempting playground.
At my childhood Fossil Hill, the roots of the maples and oaks on the top of the ridge were twisted and bare along the eroding slope, too, making perfect handholds and footholds for clambering up and down. I still remember nestling among those roots, combing the soil for hours for brachiopods. I almost never went home empty handed--true to its name, the hillside was a treasure trove. I vaguely knew what brachiopods were: marine creatures that existed in a different geologic time period on Earth. I didn't really appreciate just how old they were, though--around 450 million years, by most estimates--or how they'd met their demise during a mysterious shift in the earth's climate, something now referred to as an "extinction event."
Standing at the base of the Scalzo Creek waterfall, the childhood memories of Fossil Hill bubbled up in me, and before I knew it, I, too, was contributing to erosion, grasping at the tree roots, climbing to the top of the ridge to stand above the waterfall looking down, hungry for the bird's-eye view. I was an innocent kid again, till I reached the top, that is, where a large black plastic pipe snaked up the hill where the creek should have been. The creek bed itself was stony and dry, a shocking substitute for what should have been a babbling brook. Water was spitting out of the pipe at the lip of the falls so it looked natural, but it really wasn't.
Whatever for? I wondered. Why was the creek confined to a severe black tube, even its color an affront to the greens, grays and browns of nature? And where had the vital, teeming microcosm of small creekbed creatures gone when deprived of their wet world? Perhaps, I thought, in this one example of human efficacy, I witnessed an example of the progress of our own extinction event, which is, inexorably, upon us.
I grew up on the edge of a no-man's-land, our house in Ohio perched on the rim of a ravine. At the ravine's deepest point, a shallow, unnamed creek spilled furtively down to the broader, resplendent Chagrin River valley. When I was young, the creek was a favorite place to play, the water stagnant enough that we made a game of hopping downstream from stone to slippery stone, pushing through drooping branches, scrambling over fallen trees, all the while alert for murky clay pits that, if we weren't careful, sucked the shoes right off our feet. When we got older we took to the ridges, roaming far and wide, crisscrossing leaf-strewn, mossy slopes under a forest canopy of oak, beech and hickory. Plenty of people lived around there--you could glimpse the green-golden glow of their lawns at the edge of the shade-rippled forest--but we never encountered them in "our" woods.
I live in the Northwest now and just recently found another no-man's-land only a mile or so from our house. The lower Coal Creek ravine sits near a populated commercial district, yet it's another world entirely, thick with stands of large-leaf maple and cottonwood trees. It's clear that the trail was built with foot traffic in mind, with rotting, moss-coated bridges straddling muddier areas of run-off. These days the trail is overgrown. Nettles, ferns and branches narrow the path and spiders weave their webs right across it: I used a stick to clear the way as I explored. It is a no-man's-land reminiscent of my childhood, a territory under dispute between untamed nature and the human population. I'm amazed and grateful there's still wilderness tucked away in my crowded, urban world.
Yesterday was the Fourth of July. I didn't go out to see the American flags adorning the parkway near my home, an intrusive reminder that there's a difference between being proud of who you are and pretending to be proud of who you are (thereby hoping to make it so). I didn't attend any fireworks shows, though I could see some in the distance from my deck, could hear them, too, the earth trembling beneath my feet much as I imagine Iraqi citizens hear and feel the tremors of uninvited ferocity from the sanctuary of their homes. I kept waiting to hear sirens, those ominous wails screaming of blood and gore born of recklessness or revenge, announcing someone's loss of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness; but none sounded.
On the fifth of July, I jogged through quiet, sleepy streets, through the litter of spent fireworks, past the mute, swaying plastic U.S. flags punctuating the parkway, the bright sunshine a stark contrast to the uncertainty and terror of last night's dark hours. We are a land of people usurped, I reflect, our virtue overwritten by a few individuals of power and privilege. Perhaps the phrase in our declaration should have read: life, liberty and the pursuit of peace. That would be something to proudly wave a flag about.
Paranoid in the midwest Everything is half the price in this state, an anomaly that tempts me to move here. I've driven through five states to reach this one, the highway burning beneath our tires, slogging our minds, sloshing us into sleep-dazed stupors. We still have half a country to cover, but we take a random exit into the cornfields. The road dissolves immediately to gravel, the dust rising behind us obscuring where we’ve been, the stones kicking and spitting in our wheel wells. Can’t we swim, mom, please? I have promised the kids this: a community swimming pool, cool blue water to splash in. But dry blue sky is dominant, the paper-cut stalks of corn stretching acre upon acre as far as the eye can see. From the highway, the fields were abundant, verdant, purposeful. Now, lost in this sun-dappled undergrowth, we are enveloped by an alien world of green, programmed rows, of insects clicking and buzzing in self-serving monotony. We locate the community pool and they see us coming, the farm families who all know each other by name and car and house and area of town. They know us, too: we are the invaders of undefined purpose, strangers who will move on. They stare at us like they’re on their living room couches, me and my kids a popular TV show. Changing into swimsuits in the locker room is almost unbearable. The dazzling water sparkles cool blue, just as I’ve promised, but the pool does not refresh. Its chlorinated depths leave us longing for the road, where no one notices who we are, where no one stares through our souls, convinced we don’t belong.
