Wandering Around, With Photos.

Yesterday I had occasion to be out in Corbett, an itty-bitty town up the Gorge.  I was at Menucha Conference Center, and I had a bit of free time on my hands.

So I went exploring, lured by the promise of walking trails and spectacular views, and by the glint of sunlight on damp leaves.

They weren't kidding about the views, that's for sure.

Though the river was mostly hidden behind a generous curtain of trees, this was the view from the swimming pool.  The pool itself was also spectacular:

Not so much in the "wanna dive in!" sense as in: Wow that's green.

Not far from the emerald pool was a giant stone hearth.  It has clearly been far too long since someone set up a blaze here:

You could definitely cook some stuff in that thing.  If you click to see the photo larger, you might notice the inexplicable initials inside: J M.  It's obvious that stories are piled up here, thick and musty as the dead leaves.

Menucha also has a really nice labyrinth, made of brick and stone and moss and pebbly mosaic:

The plastic jugs had candles in them, stabilized by sand.

Walking the labyrinth is probably my favorite form of meditation.  The twists and turns made me think of the unexpected nature of living life in a chronologically linear fashion, and how sometimes, when it looks like you are moving away from the goal, you are actually moving toward it.

But the rich smell of damp leaf mold and sweet evergreen lured me deeper into the woods, past all the interesting things made of concrete and rocks.  I picked a trail and a direction, and started walking.

I didn't know where I was going.  I had a rough trail map, and a vague idea that most of the trails went in a circle, but I didn't really know where I was... and that was the best feeling.  My favorite dreams are like this, where I'm in an interesting place and I'm exploring it, with no sense of urgency, discovering curious new things at every turn.

There were a lot of things to discover, here.

I was sort of obsessed with all the moss, and took way too many macro shots of it.  Here is the best one:

The ferns were amazing, too.  I was trying to get a really good shot of the ferns from the underside, like from the perspective of a little forest creature looking up through them, when I was distracted by the sound of someone picking their way down the bank. I was annoyed -- I was enjoying the solitude and didn't want to shift back into polite banter mode -- but when I looked up, I froze.  It was a mule deer, about to take a shortcut across the path.  It saw me and it, too, paused.

I tried to sneak in a sneaky photo, without moving or looking away, just hoping I had the deer in the shot.  Flash!  ...oops.

 
Instead of bolting, though, the deer walked a few paces back (off to the right, still in the frame of this shot) and stopped moving, still nearly in full view.

Ah. Excuse me.  I walked softly away, and so (I saw, glancing nonchalantly back over my shoulder) did the deer.

I followed a narrow side trail, which began wobbling down a hillside toward the sound of rushing water.  I began to get excited about this stream, and about taking pictures of it.  But the mud was getting muddier and muddier, and I wasn't wearing mud-friendly shoes.  So when I reached a particularly swampy stretch of path, closely flanked by tall drippy weeds and blocked by a substantial spiderweb, I turned back... but not before looking up.

The weather has been all wrong for autumn color this year, but a few trees managed to represent anyway.  The gold-on-blue is so heraldic, I think.  Giving up short of a goal is always disappointing, but the golden tree made it feel like a triumphant moment: I came this far! And I knew when it was time to turn back!  Huzzah!

Highlights from the Northwest Folklife Festival, 2010.

 - Buskers.  Buskers, buskers, buskers.  Buskers with didjeridoos, buskers with drums, buskers twiddling Labyrinth-type glass spheres, buskers with one-man-band getups, buskers in clusters, buskers going it alone.  Incredibly talented buskers and buskers operating on sheer chutzpah.  Folklife is buskers, at its heart; the rest is just icing.  I noticed accordions were big this year.  I didn't see anyone painted all one color holding really still, though; apparently that schtick has gone out of fashion.

 - A music/dance performance by the Northwest Korean Arts Center, a marvel of precision and grace... aside from the children's dance number, which was an utter disaster (missing every cue and getting all clustered up and tripping over each other, one tiny girl standing there bawling over a minor injury while the others danced on without her) and which, of course, completely stole the show.

 - Watching a guy surprise his girlfriend by showing up from out of town right after her East Indian dance performance.  Her response was priceless.  (She sort of yelped, and then she stood there for a beat and looked at him, and then she hugged him, and then she shoved him away and yelled, "You are such a liar!" and then she hugged him again even tighter.)

 - Coyote Grace: If I were writing ad copy for this band, I would namecheck Old Crow Medicine Show and Martin Sexton.  Of course they weren't as good as either of those, I mean come on, but still: extremely listenable.

 - I got three contra dances in.  Gary (#1) kept telling me "The important thing is to have fun," probably because I was having trouble getting my shoulders out of the "freeway driving" setting, but still, that's really not something you want to hear from your dancing partner.  Will (#2) was terrific, though, lively and infectiously cheerful and conscious of the subtleties that make everything go smoother. And Justin (#3) was very patient even though I could not seem to remember for the life of me how a "hay-for-four" works, ugh.  Oh, but the band was called Full Moon and they were super good.

 - Dinner and catching-up with MikenViv, who were generous enough to put me up on short notice in very comfortable quarters, and even let me snuggle their dog.  They are remarkably cool people I could easily have missed the opportunity to get to know, and I'm so, so glad I didn't.

 - Saanish (Coast Salish) storyteller Che Oke' Ten cramming a remarkable array of stories, music, and tradition into a half hour.  This guy was good.  I don't wanna get all mystical on you here, but seriously, his funny story about his mother trying to chase down a dachshund named "Handsome" was a better sermon in six minutes than I usually get at church in forty-five (and my preacher is no slouch).

 - Mingushki, a smokin' world music trio with a sinuous trumpet, saucy percussion, and an accordion-shaped heart.  The tunes they played were mostly from Eastern Europe and Central America, and their time signatures were insane.  Apparently they also play with a larger Balkan ensemble, one of whom was absolutely certain he knew me from somewhere (we couldn't figure it out, and before you ask, no, he wasn't playing it like a pickup line).

 - Salmon with cilantro sauce and rice.  (Would you like a samosa for $2 more?  Um, yes. Yes I would.)

 - Eavesdropping on a fortune teller who does divination with toy dinosaurs.  She was saying things like, "...but another thing about Stegosaurus is, he has two brains, one in his head and another in his tail, which relates to dividing your attention between two areas of focus," and her teenage customer was nodding his hoodied head very seriously.

 - A toddler who waved and said, "Hi!" as though we were old friends.  Unclear whether this had anything to do with the knit cap with bear ears I was wearing at the time.

 - A brief baptism in the sea of electronic sound at the 8-Bit Showcase.  The band I caught, Fighter X, were doing that looping-electronic-performance thing where they twiddle their equipment while bobbing their heads, then jump and flail around wildly, then go back to twiddling.  Repeat ad hilarium.  The Sky Church has this giant video wall that was looping brilliant blinky patterns.  The effect was mesmerizing, but about as far from folk music as you can get.  "Scream if you want more bass!" hollered one of the musicians, as if you could even hear the crowd over the music, and then they bumped it way up and the notes vibrated all through my tired muscles.  Ahhh.

 - Mr. Yuk was there. Mr. Yuk! I thought he was dead!  I also thought he was two-dimensional.  Shows what I know.  I gave him a hug, and he gave me a bright green pencil with WASHINGTON POISON CENTER on it. POISON HELP, it says, with a handy number to call in case I need any help poisoning someone.

Happy Year of the Tiger!

For the second year running, the Lunar New Year feels a lot more like a fresh start to me than the, uh, Solar kind. Holiday hassles are a distant memory (the one with the hearts and smooches is not much of a hassle for me), days are getting long enough to have a little elbow room in them, and this whole Way Early Spring thing we've been having in the Pacific Northwest, though it will doubtless have some negative consequences, is really just awfully pleasant.

I put on my beautiful new orange socks and went for a walk on Mt. Tabor today, where I kept running into the same batch of skateboarding teens over and over again. Round another corner, there they'd be, all scruffy and ebullient, scrambling up the hillside or yelling at each other over the rasp of their wheels. It was kind of like my walk in the park had a limited extras budget and so they had to keep using the same people over and over.

My pockets were empty, so I picked a wildflower to leave at the hidden shrine (perhaps you know about the hidden shrine at Tabor? It's appropriate to leave an offering of some sort there, though to whom you are offering is, I think, up to the giver. You can also take something, if you like). There was a baby's shoe there and some pretty stones, but it wasn't as cluttered as usual. I think someone has been tending it. Maybe everybody tends it.

On the way out I crossed paths with my neighbor, the self-designated neighborhood watchman. I quizzed him about his former career as an undertaker while he walked me home. (Apparently the economic downturn has really hit the funeral industry hard. I had no idea.) He also told me about the people who used to live in my house over the years. Seems one of those people was the self-designated neighborhood watchman, years ago; he would sit and look out my front window all day long, just keeping an eye on things. I am grateful for people like that.

In other news, I am apparently one of Blogger's Problem Children, because I insist on hosting my blog on my own webspace instead of at Blogspot, and they don't want me to do that anymore. I'm not super excited about compromising with a redirect URL, as they suggest, so I'm wondering if this is the time to make that switch to WordPress I keep thinking about (you know, so I can gripe about a different service!). I still have a lot more research to do on this, but if you have any input on the usefulness and/or limitations of WordPress, I'd love to hear it.