"Home from Nowhere"

Lately, I've been reading and hearing lectures on topics I know nothing about. I enjoy reading and hearing smart people explain what it is they spend time thinking about.

I stumbled on "Home from Nowhere: Remaking our Everyday World for the 21st Century" by Howard Kunstler. It was referenced in a guidebook on home building. I checked it out from the library and it was nothing like I thought it would be. The original reference leading me to the book had to do with how horizontal windows are not flattering to a house because they break an inherent code in our humanity. From the outside looking in, the horizontal window harkens to the image of a prone body. Prone bodies only happen in situations not meant for the public eye; sleeping, sex, and death, as examples.

The rest of the book dealt with how we design homes and towns; what is wrong with strip malls, what is wrong with mega-mansions, and what is wrong with our zoning codes that allow these monstrous abominations. And, the best part was, he wasn't an environmentalist. He broke down all the reasons why we are uncomfortable with development today. He spoke of humanness and the soul of civic life. And he spoke of how we are losing it.

It made tangible for me things I feel when I travel through the American human-constructed landscape. It put the problems and solutions into words I understand.

I found it fascinating and inspiring. I think all City and County Planners should read it. And you should too.

Post-Thanksgiving trauma and drama

I guess if Julie tags, that means I must respond.

I could write a feel-good piece and say I'm thankful to live in a country with freedoms not known many places. Or that my husband is the perfect man. Or that my chosen career fills me with satisfaction. Or that I have a roof over my head. These are all true. But, they are also not quite true, because it is not actually what I feel. The truth I come away with this holiday is much more gritty. It is the truth of my family.

My family gives the most reasons to be thankful. They are complicated, stubborn, distant, smart, full-of-life, never give up, always right, never perfect, loving, caring, compassionate,the whole bag of human strengths and frailties. We laugh together, we party together, we cry together, we chill together. And we fight. I am usually on the opposite side of everything and everybody. Pushing boundaries is apparently my purpose in life. Despite this, I love them.

And with my family, I am also accepted (if sometimes grudgingly). They understand that I am complicated, stubborn, distant, smart, full-of-life, never give up, always right, never perfect, loving, caring, compassionate, the whole bag of human strengths and frailties. They love me anyway. Who else would bother to love such an outcast? It's hard work. So, thanks to my family!

Pretend this was inserted in September

My big vacation this year was a week hike along a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail. Mike & I traversed the 70 miles from Stevens Pass to Snoqualmie Pass. I'd like to say we chose to do in a week what a lot of people do in 4 days because we wanted to really explore the area. Truth is, I'm just not as hardcore as I used to be and Mike has never enjoyed long days on the trail; he prefers long days in camp. It was as incredible as I had expected, and as grueling. Every day was thousands up and thousands down. Or to mix it up a bit, thousands down THEN thousands up. Mike keeps asking why I haven't posted any photos. I'm not sure; I think it has something to do with the fact that even if I posted all 300+ photos, it just doesn't quite capture the trip. I'll post a few anyway.

Okay, so even after culling 250, there's quite a few. You can find them at MySpace page, 'cuz that just seems easier.

Is this me?

So, my birthday is right around the corner and I'm old enough to have a pretty good idea of who I am, even if I'd like to deny it sometimes. Although originality was deemed highly desirable in my upbringing, I've come to learn that I'm not all that different from most other people.

In my wanderings as a Backcountry Ranger on the coast, it was easy to track other hikers in the sand. When I knew there was a hiker travelling ahead of me, I would sometimes deliberately try to take alternate routes, to avoid previous footprints. I would climb over car-sized boulder fields, choose less obvious routes, pull myself over headlands, look for the challenge I thought others would avoid, given the choice of an easier route. Always at the end of the self-imposed detour, I would land in the other hiker's footprint. Left boot into left bootprint. Next time, I'd try the same idea, hugging the tideline, walking on the slippery, exposed kelp, sometimes dipping a foot in the undulating tide. Still, half a mile later, there's the inevitable foot print.

In Search & Rescue (SAR), one senior Ranger was the best at finding people because he understood that lost people follow the same routes time & again. If your last known location was Point A, he would look around point X. Something about the terrain draws lost people in undeniable ways. In one search with this Ranger, I was flown into a lost hiker's last known location. Within minutes of debarking from the helicopter, I landed in the hiker's bootprint! Soon, we found signs of camp. A little later, we lost his trail and found ourselves looking up an impossibly steep slope, covered in loose rock. The other alternative was to head downstream, through dense walls of Devil's Club. We explored up-slope a bit and through the wall of thorny shrubs, until darkness set in.

I looked up that slope and knew in my gut that given the choice of a thorny wall or an open slope, the hiker had gone up. The next morning my gut feeling was confirmed as the senior Ranger, flying over the Park, sighted an SOS spelled out in rocks on the other side of the ridge. The lost hiker had gone up over that treacherous ridge. Straight up 1,000 feet. The route made no sense and, its only conclusion was to end up at the top of a 300' waterfall dead end. But, I knew if it was me without a map and compass, I would have made the same decision and climbed up to that ridge.

And yet, when I look up traits of my sun sign, "Scorpio" online, I'm a bit shocked at how well it describes me. From the first hit http://www.astrology-online.com/scorpio.htm:

Determined and forceful
Emotional and intuitive
Powerful and passionate
Exciting and magnetic

On the dark side....
Jealous and resentful
Compulsive and obsessive
Secretive and obstinate

From the next http://zodiac-signs-astrology.com/zodiac-signs/scorpio.htm:

Scorpio in a Nutshell: Scorpio is the astrology sign of extremes and intensity. Scorpios are very deep, intense people, there is always more then meets the eye. They present a cool, detached and unemotional air to the world yet lying underneath is tremendous power, extreme strength, intense passion and a strong will and a persistent drive. Scorpios have a very penetrative mind, do not be surprised if they ask questions, they are trying to delve deeper and figure things out and survey the situation. They always want to know why, where and any other possible detail they can possibly know. Scorpios are very weary of the games that other people try to play and they are very aware of it. Scorpios tend to dominate and control anyone that lets them, or anyone that they find weak. The person that a Scorpio respects and holds close to them is treated with amazing kindness, loyalty and generosity. On the outside, a Scorpio has great secretiveness and mystery. This magnetically draws people to them. They are known to be controlling and too ambitious but only because they need control for this makes them feel safe.

Again, here's my boot landing undeniably into the bootprint. If there are 6.6 billion people on this planet, and (for argument's sake) 1/12th of them are Scorpio, then I am exactly like 550 million other people on this planet. Not so original, after all.

My husband's birthday is tomorrow. He is a Libra/Scorpio cusp. Libras are:
Romantic and charming
Easygoing and sociable
Idealistic and peaceable

On the dark side....
Indecisive and changeable
Gullible and easily infuenced
Flirtatious and self-indulgent

On sharing this information with him, he also saw a tread under his hovering foot. His astonished comment was "But what about free will?"

I don't typically read horoscopes and certainly don't base any of my decisions in life on these things, but it is quite interesting that the personalities in this household seem to match our sun signs.

fall already?

When the morning alarm sounds, it is still dark outside my window. Mornings of late are draped in damp fog. The early chill demands a long-sleeved choice from the wardrobe. The interspersed sunny afternoons hearken to the hot summer days, but the twinge of chill tells the truth, the sun arcs too low on the horizon. Summer has waned. The harvest moon of autumn presides.

September Saturday

What do you do with "leftovers" from a dock built with chainsaws? Flooring for the little addition from two years ago. We said we weren't going to finish a space that would just be torn down a few years from now, but the wood was free. I think it looks pretty good. Puts the walls to shame.
While the boards were being secured, roasted some peppers. Into the freezer for winter treats on pizzas, pastas, spreads. One more week of the Farmer's Market left.

Look at that smile!

A large package arrived today. One that took weeks of research to pick just the right one. Laser gizmos, extra lighting, sliding blades, everything! He was more diligent about this purchase than a teenage girl picking her prom dress. Just look how happy he is! Any bets on what the next project will be? Alas, more research is likely required.