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.”

FIRST
Mountain

Since Seattle is in full spring now, we decided it’s time to start climbing. Mount Si, a little mountain that gives first time mountain climbers 3200 feet to climb, was our first project. It’s only 30 minutes from our back door behind a little town called North Bend where David Lynch filmed Twin Peaks so it made sense to give it a try. Rumbling and grumbling in shirtsleeves we realized pretty quickly that we’ve lost whatever mountain legs we had.

At the rocky mountain top we sat and ate our big apples from Yakima and tried to ignore the idle chatter of the runaway gym bunnies on the other side of our boulder. There were strange tame birds there who ate whatever we had in hand; a hotshot airplane pilot circled the peak in a sharp bank while likely giggling. To the west flatlands stretch out to Bill Gates’ invented cities of Bellevue and Redmond, and farther still to Seattle. In the deep horizon hard-packed drifts of snow still filled out the shadowy places on the Olympics. Down below, the squared green fields were sprinkled with black dots which represented cows likely sunning themselves in the same hazy light we ourselves enjoyed. To the south, the white mountain named Rainer still stood like a sharp exception to the mundane world of trees, animals and cities.

On our way up I told Jennifer that maybe popular Mt. Si would become our new mountain since it is so available. She said she wasn’t ready to betray her past commitments. When we were at the peak looking south, it was plain that only the tallest of mountains would do.

GUEST POST #4 BY JENN

Happy Birthday Darren

Friday night Darren and I slid into a Tiny Vipers induced trance. Perhaps it was the tenderness with which she played her guitar or the swaying trees projected on to the screen in the background. But this Sawdust Mountain inspired event got me to thinking about how we’ve begun to sink our teeth into this space.

Mount Rainier looms over our every move. This time of year it is layered thick with snow - completely surrendered to the cold. I never really heard the low hum of a mountain until last summer when we climbed our way over molten rock up to the glaciers. When diagnosed with terminal illnesses in our old age we will coerce our children to abandon us on its slopes.

A short drive away, the Hoh rainforest is our magical kingdom in which we consistently expect magical things to happen even though they consistently don’t. They say the air is so thick with nutrients here that many plants nearly forgo the soil as they subsist almost solely on what they gather from it. Last time we were there the salmon were rotting in the streams and the moss was dripping down on us from a carpet in the sky.

King of all this is the Pacific Ocean – an unbridled mess of energy and force. We can’t help but gape at the waves charging us and the driftwood littered about like the plant equivalent of whale bones. We are entertained for hours by the barnacles, starfish and “skimmerfish.” It is in places like this that Darren is able to muster up all his poetic forces to call me his “little dribble of hope” (honestly).

I have of course been connected to many places in the past – the first being the rocks, lakes and trees of Northwestern Ontario. It’s a place where a person who likes to be alone can easily achieve their goal. I think it’s hard for most of us to envision a childhood apart from the landscape in which we were formed. I imagine my children having a place to hunt lizards and turn over turtles and keep logs of the culinary likes and dislikes of specific backyard anthills. These days, my thoughts most frequently turn to the small plot of earth that holds a kind and gentle friend who would have flown far if she hadn’t fallen.

Haiti hits a person like a tidal wave with its energy and smells. There’s something so strong in its atmosphere – maybe born of oppression and struggle and the sheer determination to survive and laugh another day. I am tied to a small circle of land on which the houses of our neighbours are strung like pearls. Good, hardworking people who called me Little Horse as I completed another loop on my bicycle. I hope the atmosphere of Haiti is rich in nutrients to get its inhabitants (the brick I call my sister included) through these unimaginably hard times.

New York was hard and cold. Its mountains were manmade and prone to collapse at the whim of whoever was steering the airplane. But when I found the Indian Rock Caves I thought my soul would explode. Somehow a small space at the tip of Manhattan has managed to shake off high-rises and even harbor an eagle or two. And down a flight of stairs in a basement in Queens is a very capable mom of two funny little girls who gives humanity a good name every time.

I guess NW China will be next with its deserts and flaming mountains. Who knows after that, but I am finding that I am increasingly tied to this 28 year old collection of cells and sentiments known as Darren T. Byler. He is, as 16 Horsepower would say, my mobile home.