!

yesterday me and my bike set out in the early morning cold -- I could see my breath! -- and went on a bike adventure to salem. the cloudy weather they had predicted never materialized, which I was grateful for; those first 8 or 10 miles before the sun came up were cold, particularly without the benefit of bike gloves. but the sun came up and the temperature was perfect, and everything I needed was stuffed into the pockets of my jersey. I opted for the scenic route, ten miles longer than the more direct way, cutting west for awhile to travel along the willamette valley scenic bikeway: back roads littered with orchards and vineyards and two tractors tilling the earth, dirt clouds I rode through happily, glad to be able to smell the land. 66 miles from portland to salem, where I was greeted with beers and ice cream and a couple of happy dogs.

this is the last week of my summer. this week I've processed chickens at my friends' farm, I've skipped stones on the willamette, I've eaten candy, I've ridden my bike, I've cleaned stalls at the barn. I've read my book. I've hung out with my favorite person (twice). I've woken before dawn (twice). it's easy to spin everything as lovely, but in truth I've also been restive and bored and lonely, itchy and yearning in ways that I find difficult to articulate, even to myself. they are feelings that I suspect I should probably sit with, listen to, but I find myself avoiding them instead. one recent morning I lay in bed thinking, I wish I could travel more, I wish I could just up and go away for the weekend, I wish I led that kind of life, and then I got mad at myself, because if there's anything I've learned in the last year, it's that you're never stuck. you're only as stuck as you think you are.

although I let it pass without mentioning it to anyone, a year ago yesterday this happened. it took me months to pick up the pieces. I wasn't sure I wanted to acknowledge it at all, because JESUS, I've talked about it enough. I don't want to give the mistaken impression that I have any lingering regrets or pain or sadness. I don't. that ship sailed long ago, and good riddance. but this morning, I was standing in the sun-soaked barn, cleaning a stall, thinking of my one-year-ago self, and feeling a great deal of compassion for her. she thought she was stuck; she thought nothing would ever get better.

she came such a long way to get here. here, there might be transient boredom and worry, but there is also so much sunshine, adventure, playfulness, humor, resilience, courage, gratitude, love.

homestead

maryland, summer, nighttime: silent but for the sound of the crickets -- endless crickets. the windows open, the house warm and sticky and still.

the yard is populated primarily by weeds, which must always have been the case. there's an enormous amount of wild strawberry. the backyard is overgrown, or rather, overgrowing, but in a sweet, homey, unkempt way. the front yard, flat and easy to mow, is tame. business in the front, party in the back.

the smells are all different. I can't put my finger on how, exactly. when I was a kid growing up in that house, I used to think of the smell of the front yard (as I spent hours mowing it) as "buttery." now, better accustomed to it, I can recognize it as a kind of hay smell, though buttery still comes to mind: warm, yellow. as a teen on the mower in late summer, grasshoppers would shoot in all directions from the dried stalks of grass as I passed up and down the yard. six acres. it took a long time.

my brother is taller than me -- taller than me!! this was a great novelty to both of us -- but still the kid I know, just surrounded by a new, slightly surlier teenage exterior. we play frisbee in the yard. we're both pretty bad at it but we have a good time. one night while my mom and sister are at 4-H camp, we watch a bunch of episodes of "deadliest warrior" on spike TV. we eat pizza, which he heats in the oven and brings out for us. he's finally hooked on doctor who (I've been telling him for years) and we watch something like 15 episodes while I'm home.

the cornfields are everywhere. the houses are old, with older barns, the silos crumbling into the earth. in general, everything feels older on the east coast. I might just be imagining it.

I eat snowballs. I actually declared to my mom when I landed at BWI that I wanted a snowball at least every other day, since it's such a regional food that there's no chance in hell of ever having one here. I didn't get my first one for four days, which continues to feel like a great travesty. then, instead of getting a bunch of kiddie cups of every flavor I like (fireball, spearmint, chocolate, egg custard, birthday cake, sour cherry), I got chocolate every time. I did get crazy and ask for a chocolate/fireball combo for my last one, the day before I left. it was delicious.

actually, I ordered chocolate cherry a few times. with marshmallow. so probably you shouldn't pay attention to my complaining.

my sister showed two lambs at the 4-H county fair. do you know how you trim a lamb's hooves? it's hilarious.



they flip the lambs over (an athletic maneuver in itself) and plop them on their butts. for whatever reason the lambs go totally docile the minute they're put like that. I don't know whether there's something akin to twitching a horse in it (where maybe the position releases some sort of calming endorphin?) but more likely the lamb is like, "fuck it. I'm stuck." I took like a hundred pictures of this because I could not get over how hilarious it was. also my sister clipped those hooves like a boss. I'm glad I don't have to do this to Cookie.






(practice-showing her southdown)

I showed my sheep earlier in the week.

that's ethel. lucy was in the other room. in the background you can see my brother racing out the door. this is because my sister was about to recite, apparently for the 900th time, the FFA creed. I was holding the lamb as a tribute.

we drove to the beach. I already told you about that. on the drive, I told my sister wicked stories about my troublemaking as a kid. I didn't think I was a particularly bad kid but in comparison to her, I was. she was pretty horrified. I hope I didn't give her any ideas, or blackmail fodder.

my mom and I visited my brother at his internship at the national aquarium. they still have the bubble columns from when I was a kid. I was pretty nervous about them because they used to be right at the entrance and they weren't there when we walked in, but it turns out that's because they built a whole other wing that you have to walk through to get to the old entrance. I was so happy about the columns that I hugged them.


yeah, I don't know either. that's a shark fin on my head, in case you're wondering. my brother was, sadly, not embarrassed. he's pretty used to these shenanigans by now.

also at the aquarium there is the best sign ever. EVER.

I really wanted to.

this fucker is beautiful but he starts crowing at, I don't know, 4 AM? party foul, buddy.

his name is jimbob. that's not a joke.

we go to an O's game. not-quite-nosebleed seats that turn out to be pretty good, and in the foul zone, but no luck on catching any. we do get there in time for FREE JERSEY NIGHT which I am irrationally stoked about.





fuck yeah, natty boh.


yeah, nobody can ever see the family resemblance.

one day travis and I run one of my favorite old trails, whose turnaround point is a spot on the gunpowder where my track buddies used to sometimes jump from a bridge into the river. the water was too shallow to make the leap but I did wade in from the shore. it was utterly frigid. of course we skipped stones, because anybody who's ever been with me near a body of water knows I can't not skip stones. the trail was just as I had remembered it. but harder.

I unearthed some treasures from the basement, in the midst of searching for my yearbooks. all my old track ribbons, two pairs of track spikes, my powderpuff jersey, my kindergarten gym uniform (private school). my uniforms from the years I spent as a competitive jumproper. they still fit. sort of.


jacket model, jumprope model

a great deal of nostalgia, in general, but when it was time to go, there was none of the homesickness of last year. in truth, part of me was glad to be coming back here. the country doesn't get any smaller, and it doesn't get any easier to be so far from them, but in oregon, there's more to look forward to these days. which I am grateful for.

sunset beach at sunset \\ kite flying on a windy day \\ impending storm \\ kid sister & me \\ jack \\ hole digging, day 2 \\ prohibited words & related offenders \\ ashley learns to juggle \\ evening walk \\ dusk

north carolina. all things are the same as always, except that we grow older. the house is, as usual, crowded. beth (34) and her daughter kaitlin (14); amy (33) and her boys (3 and 6); me and my sister ashley (just weeks shy of 15); my aunt and uncle. my other cousin, stephanie (30), is too pregnant and doesn't make the trip. beth and I share a bed, which is somehow hilarious and comfortable and fine. it reminds me of when we were girls, when amy and beth and I would all sleep in the same bed and I would hate waking in the middle of the night to use the bathroom because I'd have to crawl over them, afraid to rouse them in the process.

it's the same boring wonderful routine: breakfast, coffee, sunscreen, beach. I bring a book down every day but hardly read at all. we talk idly, for hours. the teenagers swim. every day I dig a giant, elaborate hole for the boys, who seem to remain unimpressed but continue to ask me for another one every day anyway. jack, the youngest, can't remember my name so I tell him he can call me whatever he wants. he names me 'hermit crab.'

the girls catch a guy from a neighboring family repeatedly checking me out as I walk past and we take to calling him 'boyfriend.' boyfriend becomes a week-long joke. 'you can't eat any more today if you want to impress boyfriend,' beth says. 'we just figured out which house boyfriend lives in,' kaitlin declares one day, triumphant.

this is literally all we do. sleep, eat, beach, trashy TV. one night we steam 4 dozen crabs. there is always shrimp, cooked in the maryland fashion, boiled in a ton of seasoning. we mix ketchup and horseradish into a seafood sauce and then we make pained faces with every bite, as the horseradish hits our noses. this is part of the endless traditions. the others: we sit on the porch in the rocking chairs, painting our nails. we play cutthroat rounds of double solitaire, a game which, incidentally, I've never encountered outside my own family. there are beers.

we stay for five days, then late one afternoon, it's time for my sister and me to hit the road. just off the island, we stop at alice's produce stand, where I buy butter beans and enormous, heavy tomatoes and one peach for the road. alice rings us up, and thanks us. "y'all come back now," she calls, and we are in the car again, the windows down, the radio up.

sunset beach, part 2

(crab and I were both startled when I approached him on the beach, and he scurried under this rock before I could show him to my brother)


















(a photo of the wind: one morning we got up early and biked to the east end of the island to watch the sunrise, only to get there and discover that the winds were easily 30-40 mph, blowing so hard I literally could not bike against them. the attempt to photograph my brother's bike ended up only in blurs, because I couldn't hold my hand still.)


(my sister and I got featherlocks, please pardon my stupid expression)




(our second attempt at watching the sunrise, on my final day at the beach, was much more successful than the first)









I'm back in portland now. on my final day at the beach I awoke at 5, no longer able to sleep. my mom, my brother and I biked to the end of the island to watch the sun rise, and then, after dropping our bikes at the house, walked down to our spot on the beach and went for an early morning swim. with the exception of just two small breaks, I stayed on the beach that day from 6 AM until 2:30 in the afternoon, desperate to squeeze the last drop of every moment I had left.

my mom drove me to the wilmington airport, about an hour from the island. I had showered but on my skin was the chalky residue of sunscreen, and my hair blew curly in the air from the open window. when I reached the airport we hugged and, as always, my mother had tears in her eyes. how do I keep doing this? I wonder. I said some insipid thing like I'll see you at christmas or you should come out for thanksgiving! but it felt trite and false. I loaded up my huge backpack and walked through the airport door with a wave. after I had checked in, I walked briefly back outside to savor for one last instant that weather I so love.

inside the airport, I cried until the plane began boarding.

I feel too old for homesickness, yet here it is, seemingly worse than ever. back in portland, the cloudy mornings give way to sun. scott sleeps next to me. the vegetables in the garden are enormous. but inside me there is a deep gash I don't know how to fill.

sunset beach, week one

(my cousin's stash. apparently it was on sale. we call her room "the liquor store")





















this morning at 8 AM it was 85 degrees. the humidity makes my hair curl. in the mornings there is coffee, sometimes muffins. everything, including the bed, is covered in sand.

a few days ago, a bold crow stole an entire packet of my baby cousin's crackers out of a bag, then hopped five feet away from us and looked at us inquisitively. when little jack ran after him, the crow flew over the dunes with the packet. a few minutes later, we saw him fly idly by with an orange peanut butter cracker in his beak.

vacation: good.