MT RAINIER

Was too bright for us

It dazzled our dull minds "to desperate enthusiasm" just like John Muir said it would when he climbed it in 1898. The next time we come back we will have spikes in our shoes or at least webs on our feet and we will not let 12 feet of snow stop us from gaining the so-called Muir Snowfield. Instead, this time, we started our climb down in the deep forests hiking with the birds until we found our own private variation of Muir's "newborn world" where we could watch the mountain make its weather and the ground squirrels freeze in time.

We love these mountains and these forests. They sharpen our dulled minds and make the world new with actuality. They make us note the wind and water and variations in the noisy hum of the earth at work. We'll miss these most when we're gone. But the mountains are good where we are going too.

Saying goodbye to Seattle is like saying goodbye to a good friend. We know we'll see these logging camps again and we'll miss them when we're gone.

WORRYING

Mt. Teneriffe Again

Today we tried Mt. Teneriffe with a fresh head of steam, in search of empty minds. No luck. A snow bank at about 3000 feet. J. “pulled a muscle.” We stopped and looked at Mt. Rainier instead.

Right now life is not about hiking or that someone broke into our car last night and stole mostly nothing. It’s about a year in a back water town called Silver River just south of Inner Mongolia, about reading suitcases of books, writing on a schedule as though for only the best of publications, and playing cards in noisy tea houses.

We love Seattle, but right now my mind is set on leaving this studio apartment life and endless planning so that we can sleep. Incredibly, J. says her latest research shows that worrying does the brain good: “it keeps it active … and makes baby brain cells.” Today we stopped and looked at Snoqualmie Falls and I said, “Man, I want to go down that in a barrel.”

RHUBARB AND LOGANBERRY

Moments of bliss this week.

MARCH

Like a Slug on an Apple

We spent the last month watching Twin Peaks and reading David Lynch instead of Virginia Woolf. It made sense to us since we spent so much of our time in and around the Double R Diner in North Bend, WA -- hiking the mountains and generally bringing the hype with Aaron M. from our Kafka class. We tried camping out on the Peninsula and left the tent door open so everything got soaked. We saw gray whales migrating and enjoyed ourselves in the rain. They're selling rhubarb at the farmers market now and we love Seattle.

I picked these songs for the March.

We took these pictures for the same.