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.

FEBRUARY
A month of cool drizzle and new birds

We finished reading Kafka as though he was bursting out of his little corner in Prague by growing old as a sage and strange as an animal. Jennifer turned 30 and felt like she would now grow into her skin. We climbed Mt. Si behind Seattle and still felt like youngsters trying to prove that we're not oldsters. We watched difficult movies with our friend Aaron and talked about them for hours in forgettable places around town. We ate crepes and talked about the future. We celebrated the Year of the Tiger and made awkward conversation. We played scrabble. We paid our taxes. Now we are going to read Virginia Woolf and buy airplane tickets.

I mixed these songs for February.

And these pictures too.

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.

THE NEED
To Catch Up With Nature

Someone must have poisoned our dreams because we woke up this morning with a need to hike. It could be that the warm sunshine yesterday or a new wool shirt or the way we talked about how much we wanted to go camping made us want to do it. Anyway it seemed unbearable to spend another free day of our lives in our dingy manufactured cave: a big breakfast with coffee and a long hike was just what we needed.

Out on the trail there were lots of signs of old mining shafts, domestic animals and squalling babies. We passed lots of tired little hikers and thought about how someday we will be hiking with our own little family. We talked about sustainable living: how Chinese farmers used to turn old clothes into felt which they used to make shoes. And we liked the way the old mining shafts and waterways on Cougar Mountain can be part of a man-made wilderness which is catching back up with nature.

Today seems like the first day of spring, but we think it’s just the way the winter is in Seattle. There is so much water and so many bursting clouds that it’s hard for things to die. Anyway, the trees are blooming, showing us newness and beauty.