Summer 2012

You'll have to look close or blow the picture up, but you can play a game of Where's Waldo, but this time it is called, What is Nate Garr doing next to my Sister.

“The history of mankind is the history or our misunderstandings with god, for he doesn’t understand us, and we don’t understand him.”  Saramago

This year we begin were we left off last year at The Sublimity Life.  There are two ways to talk about history:  one starts with the beginning and works its way to modern developed man, the other tells history in reverse; let us start were we are.  The problem with telling history in reverse is the hole that is created: were do we go from our ending point.  But I say let us roll our pant legs tall, make our squat legs seem strong, and let us begin from the end.  Come then you and I, let’s walk along a stone path high.  This seems to have relevance when some that believe in Mayan numerology say that the number 2012 has more than the usual amount of significance.  My blog usually ends in a dream sequence, so this year we shall begin in that same sequence. Little did we know its importance at the time, but we shall start with the dream walk that I had at the end of last year.

From the end of last year’s report:  This year in review is drawing to a close, but I always need to include at least one dream.  In the dream I’m driving up to our farm and am having a hard time finding a place to park my pickup.  That isn’t unheard of at the farm, but the interesting thing is someone has painted parking strips on the gravel lot and all the cars are parked in neat rows.  The strangest thing is all the vehicles are cars and not the usual mix of trucks, jeeps, junkers, etc.  I finally find a place to park and start walking up to the farm shop when I notice that a lot of people are wondering around, kids are playing fetch, couples are leaning against the rusted out combines and talking, and everyone seems much more Portland than Sublimity.  My first thought is that my uncles have made some new friends or maybe are hosting a party.  Not an impossible scenario for the farm at all.  I’m about to open the shop’s sliding door when I look to my right and the old giant barn has been changed significantly.  The entire thing has been converted into a housing unit.  It still looks like a barn but it also looks like a row of skinny houses.  It is one of those trippy illusions that can only make sense in a dream.  I’m shocked and want to go check it out.  I leave the shop doors closed and head off in the direction of the barn.  As I pass the corner of the shop I recognize my dad is one of the people hanging down at the end of the walkway and I want to ask him some questions.  I start walking straight towards him but with each step I take he is getting farther and farther away while at the same time standing perfectly still and smoking one of his Malboros.  I’m able to walk past things like chickens, intercity youth, and tractors to mention a few things, but my dad slowly and passively slips farther away.

“There you were, Grandma, sitting in the sill outside your house, open to the vast, starry night, to the sky of which you knew nothing and through which you would never travel, to the silence of the fields and the shadowy trees, and you said, with all the serenity of your ninety years and the fire of an adolescence never lost: “The world is so beautiful, it makes me sad to think I have to die.”  In those exact words. I was there.”  Saramago

Just in case you should ever think that I have made up Sublimity for these blogs.  On the other hand I have made up a bunch of other things for these blogs.

On the other hand, what happens in Sublimity stays in Sublimity.  Working on Carries new car.

I feel that I missed out on a great joke, I could have taken my Mayan calendar from its position on my dining room wall to a work meeting and incorporated it as my daily planner.  Eventually we would have reached the comment, “I’ll take that part of the assignment in July.”  Then I would try to mark the date on my calendar.  “Oh wait, my calendar doesn’t extend out that far.”  A mute point in terms of this blog’s publishing date.

So, as I said, this blog shall be told in reverse.  I’m now sitting in a very nice little cabin in Forks, Washington.  Today the Mayans said that the world would end.  Really what happened is today was so far out in the future for a distance civilization that they didn’t see the need to make another symbol on the calendar.  By the time you read this, it won’t be today.  These blog entries take me months to write.  But it did seem like a good day to begin my “summer” blog.  Today I saw a huge plaque on a dead and cut tree at the old mill.  The tree had begun its life 200 years after the Christians decided to put a year zero on their calendar.  It had waited many years to see its first human, or it is actually possible that one of the first humans on North America planted it, but that is unlikely.  Then in the mid 1900’s at an age of about 1750 years old, a group of loggers decided to cut it down.  It took great effort, their equipment couldn’t lift it and they had to call in for a bigger set of winches and diesel motors to carry it away.  It never got cut into boards to fuel the booms of San Francisco, Seattle, and the needs of the U.S.’s involvement in the world wars like so many of the trees in this area.  Instead it was bought by a couple of brother’s who were homesteaders and loggers in the area.  They used it for display.  Today, I didn’t see the tree; today I only saw the log that represented a great amount of pride and ingenuity from the crew that removed it.  It reminds me of the homestead that I grew up on.  My homestead was logged at a very early time by Northwest standards because it is in a very accessible area, the Willamette Valley.  They actually drug the mill to a flat spot on the property, built a house, built a shop that still stands, and logged the forests that stood above.  In similar feats of strength the trees were brought to mill.  Don’t let yourself be fooled, it was the gold and dreams that brought people out west, it was the logs and natural resources that actually made people a livelihood and riches.  Today, the end of the Mayan world, I saw this lifeless log.  And today, Lacey and I had an excellent 4-mile walk starting at Rialto Beach in Olympic National Park to a natural arch created by the ocean called Hole in the Wall, not to be confused with the bar.  On the way the weather was miserable, it is the O.P. in December.  But near the arch we had a clearing.  Time to pull out our two Tecates, take a sip, and enjoy.  God made a promise for us right then and there.  With the arch visible along our path, a small rainbow formed that joined a large basalt spire out in the ocean with a dead spruce tree that had a bald eagle on one of its branches.  We walked on.  Once we neared the spire, we found the reason for the bald eagles that were swarming the area.  The head of a deepwater fish had floated up onto the beach.  With that note, it was a special day, and a day that I would be quite happy to call my last if the world shall end later tonight.  But it hasn’t yet, and we just spent some time at a local bar called Mill Creek Pub.  The four loggers at the bar could speak a million words and actually did, but I find it easier in these blogs to explain nature and not the inner workings of a local civilization.  If the world doesn’t end tonight, we plan to head to the Ross Family House, on a different Mill Creek that flows into the Columbia, on our way back to Portland.  We will make a few nice hiking stops on the way and I will return to the O.P. because I’m suddenly realizing that in my effort to boat as much as possible in British Columbia, I have missed quite a few streams along the way.  If the world doesn’t end, you can expect my blog, as soon as I get it done, and unlike God, I never make very many promises.  Tomorrow as we pass Willapa Bay, the oyster capital of the world, I’m hoping to find an oyster shop I can trust to pick up a couple dozen oysters for the Ross Family Grill, one of my dad’s favorite coast experiences.  If the world does end tonight, I suppose that I hope that our non-existent world remembers me by a blog entry from 2008.  It is kind of a last minute thought; I could pick better, but to be truthful, I think I will be writing more in the very near future.

And God made a promise.

Summer 2008 from The Sublimity Life’s annual report:  Opening the oyster with a spoon I pricked myself and a small bead of blood has landed on my keyboard and I have lost my train of thought. Just as I was about to take a sip of beer and continue writing, the blood gathered its things, walked out the back door, took the path to the ocean, and made its way to drown itself in the Pacific Ocean; tired of the broken records of life. After freeing the cheating husband, my brother and I wasted our wish making the carpet fly. We spent the entire day taking turns going over the Willamette Valley, flying past my uncles in their combines, and buzzing unsuspecting people in suits leaving work on the way to suburbia: making Sublimity into a little suburbia of its own. I miss the days when genies and flying carpets visited my life and not just my dreams. I miss the grass seed farms before the Suits and banana plant factories took them over.

Well, the world didn’t end, and I write on, but in reverse.  Winter break was a great, relaxing way to end the year.  As mentioned above, it included a trip to the Olympic Peninsula.  It also included a couple runs down the Washougal River, one of them on my birthday.  Some time on the Hood River, Sandy River, Kalama River, you get the idea.  New year’s eve is tomorrow, and we just bought some illegal fireworks after our run on the Washougal. We plan to use them at Dave Gridley’s party tomorrow night.  Carrie, Alex, and my little brother Zach, are buzzing about their trip to Ecuador to kayak with about quarter of the Portland boating crowd in January.  Alex’s nemesis, a creek called Butte, bit him once again and he’ll be traveling with broken ribs.  I’ll let you know in next year’s blog how it goes.  (Since it is taking me so long to write this blog, I’ll give a quick detail of their trip.  Carrie recognized one of her guides in Ecuador.  In trying to place him, she asked if he had been a guide the last time she and I visiting the area.  Turns out, he had been a guide at that time.  Carrie explained the river he had helped us down.  Then suddenly he remembered, “your brother bought the whole bar drinks after the rafting trip.”  Don’t worry, Ecuadorian bars are small and it didn’t cost that much.  By the way, there are rumors that the Portland crew drank an entire village out of cervezas on this last trip.)

“Then the desert told him that death is nothing more than the exhaustion of the laws of nature:  life is the rule of the game, not its exception, and even the seemingly dead desert hid a minute world of life that originated, prolonged, imitated the laws of human existence.  He could not free himself – even if he wanted to – from the vital imperative of the barrenness to which he had come of his own free will, without anyone’s having commanded, Old gringo, get you to the desert.”  Carlos Fuentes

My thanksgiving didn’t go as planned.  Lacey and I met my brother Zach at dad’s house, the plan was to pick him up and take him out to the farm for a thanksgiving feast.  But dad wasn’t there.  It took most of the day to piece together the details, but he had a heart attack the night before walking back from the store for more smokes.  For a while we thought it might have been a hit and run, so we were pretty thankful to find that his passing had been quick and painless.  The family planned a celebration of his life at the Grange Hall property that is attached to my dad’s family farm.  It was a very emotional and meaningful event: I’ll keep the details for another day, but one of the highlights was hearing old stories of how Frank almost died doing this or that, or how he won a great game of poker, and the list goes on.  The following weekend we put a bunch of his things and his ashes in one of Mike Ross’s ammo cans and dug a hole at our family plot on top of the hill.  Something so cathartic about digging the hole with a group of family and friends and something special about having a cemetery that looks down on the farm.  The ten-gun salute was really just a bunch of firecrackers.  I’m so glad that a few weeks prior I had driven my dad to my brothers so he could see his new grandson, Tyler, and visit his granddaughter, Cassandra.

Brother Josh, the protector.  Photos courtesy Brett Smith.

And then Frank said, "you're not doing that very well, do it better." Seethe Jesus, John.

One of dad's many hats getting some good use.

Carrie and mom used the artistic side of the family to make some awesome picture boards with captions.

The extended family.  If you look close you can see little brother Zach.

Dad left his childhood teddy bear out next to the night stand.  I think it was on purpose.  It is now in an ammo can next to R.V., his step dad, pictured teddy bear right in the cockpit of the airplane with uncle rob in the passenger seat.


My editors think that I should move this blog towards some boating, the point of these yearly blogs.  I do always appreciate their skill at keeping me on task.  If they would just pay me a bit more for these blogs, I might actually keep to their timeline.

Wait uncle Shane, don't listen to your editors.  I want to be in your blog and I'm not in a boat yet.  Ok, Ok; but just this one time.

The last overnight trip of the summer was a nice one.  We hit the Lower Main Salmon in a cloud of smoke, dust, and liquor.  The plan had been to do the Upper Main Salmon, but it was on fire.  The river was still open, but it didn’t seem like the best time to go, especially given the long drive from Portland.  So instead our very Portland crew hit the lower river for one more trip.

“The unaccustomed labor tore my long black dress, my hands that had only baked cakes and fingered the rosary and touched the lonely nipple.”  Carlos Fuentes

In a cloud of smoke, dust, and liquor.  Tuss'n anyone said Jim O.

All roads lead to Rome, but some roads lead to Hell.  Just a week earlier, Nick and Kate Wagner pulled a group together for what can only be described as a party trip down the Snake River.  I do find it a little hard to believe that this was my first time down Hell’s Canyon.  It would be quite possible to make a short movie about this trip that would look very similar to some of the bachelor party themed Hollywood blockbusters.  Drinks on jet boats, flashing the cops in a jet boat, running Wild Sheep Rapid on a stand up paddle board, gladiator costumes, hula hoops, early buzzed naps because we couldn’t seem to drink all the beer, and on and on.

Shall the Romans know no mercy.

The first rapid and our leader Kate is showing us her one footed SUP skills.

Carrie on a SUP with a hula hoop.

Yes sir, our oregon invasive species permits are right here, beer?

“Thy wicked shall be marched onto the gates of men with the devil as thy leader.”  A quote during the trip from somewhere in the bible as said by Michael Glass with Kate Wagner as our leader.

“The first time an angel heard the Devil’s laughter, he was horrified.”  Kundera

I suppose parts of me just likes to mess with my editors.  They so want these blog entries to focus on the boating and very little other than the boating.  Did you ever wonder what the best invention of mankind was?  Donnie Darko said it was soap.  For no good reason when floating a river I sometimes think about this.  Nails are pretty high on my list.  Important for making boats, the most popular trading item with Native Americans, and a very subtle reason for the Viking’s ability to make such powerful ships and have such great conquests from a land that only grows little tiny trees.  And if I were to second-guess myself, I find myself thinking god.  In particular, inventing a single god who manages to become a personal god.

A week previous I was on the kid’s trip on the Lower Salmon River.  Three trips to that area in a little over three weeks; I can’t complain.  Some highlights included Zach Duffens rowing the cataraft down most of the river.  Allison and William making burping noises from their kayaks down most of the river.  The kids finding an invasive fresh water jellyfish in their biology nets that had hitchhiked here from China.  Pushing a jet boat off a sand bar for our choice of their beer stash (and I was out).  Little Elijah Harrison having his first river trip, as did some other little ones.  Bjorn and Gina again boating with us, but now with kids in tow.  And the highlight story involved Ron Jeremy.  In the middle of the night I hear a splash.  I run around with flashlight in hand hoping no one had fallen in the river.  It turns out that Rick was swimming across the river in the nude to save a boat that was floating down unmanned.  In the morning we tied it to the shore and left it.  Mike Ross couldn’t help himself.  He took a sharpie and marked on the boat, “Found by Ron Jeremy, August 2013.”  Sure enough, later that afternoon a man caught up to us wanting to thank Ron Jeremy for saving his boat.  We kindly explained to him that we didn’t have a Ron Jeremy in our group; perhaps he was downstream.  And off the man rowed.

The best picture yet of the pictographs on the upper reaches.

I think I see Ron Jeremy ahead, hold on.

Don't worry, not all of those boats are ours.  We ended up camping with another Portland crew.

Row, Row, Your Boat.

 “The invention of printing originally promoted mutual understanding.  In the era of graphomania the writing of books has the opposite effect:  everyone surrounds himself with his own writings as with a wall of mirrors cutting off all voices from without.”  Kundera

I do have to say, like Kundera, I have the same feeling about the new blog universe.  And yet at the same time, here I am writing a blog; and their Kundera is writing a book.  Such a master of irony that man is.

I had my student write me a haiku to receive full credit on a homework assignment that she was turning in late.  It is pretty darn good, I hope she wrote it and didn’t copy it from a book - - here it is:

in seasonal rain

along a nameless river

fear too has no name

I did work this summer, so you’ll notice that my list of river trips is shorter than usual.  My new self-inflicted rule is that I can’t leave the country until all my credit and college loans are paid off.  If you read next year’s blog, you’ll notice that I don’t include Canada in my no-vacation zone.  I did still stuff in a couple of Rogue River trips into August.  It is close, easy, and fun.  Lacey and I did a quick two-person trip that was relaxing.  My brother and sister in law talked my mom into babysitting.  My, at the time unborn, nephew took a ride in his mom’s belly.  The trips were awesome and the highlights included a meteor shower.

Little cousin Ty Ty on his first rafting trip.  You'll have to look close to see him.

Although Cassie didn't get on the river this year, she still got to play at the put in for the North Santiam.

“’Certainly,’ said Rubashov.  ‘A mathematician once said that algebra was the science for lazy people-one does not work out x, but operates with it as if one knew it.  In our case, x stands for the anonymous masses, the people.  Politics mean operating with this x without worrying about its actual nature.  Making history is to recognize x for what it stands for in the equation.’”  Arthur Koestler from Darkness at Noon 

I spent a lot of time while I was working this summer camping and boating on the North Fork Lewis.  The big falls are above my comfort level, but make a fun hike.  We did a new run for me, putting in below the falls and camping along the river as we made our way down to the reservoir.  Our flow was 2.1 feet on the Lewis above the Muddy.  I highly recommend this trip if you haven’t tried it and have the class four skill set.  We also did at least two other camping trips in the area and ran just the lower part with William Ross and Lori Duffens.

“cain has already given his answer by killing abel because he could not kill the lord.  things do not auger well for the future of this man.”  Saramago

Our first trip on the Grand Ronde this year was so much fun, that we decided to run a second trip.  Remember this year’s blog is in reverse, so I’ll tell you about the first trip here in a minute.  This time we took the river all the way to its confluence with the Salmon River.  The best part of the trip is our usual section, taking out at the bridge.  The lower parts have some merit, but the low quality camping is probably the largest draw back.  There is lots of private land on the lower section and few places to park a tent.  That said we had a great time over the week that separates my spring and summer terms.  Laura Sol had recently crushed her hand in a pipe bender and we were even able to talk her into joining us on our mellow adventure.  She did get a little bored and swung from a rope swing we found, one handed of course.

The word on the street this year was that the White River was once again free of wood.  I’ve been excited about this run for a long time, but have heard lots of stories of unplanned overnight trips because of wood.  With some ducking, we were able to have a no portage run.  The first day we did the upper section.  Then we camped and my sister joined us on the lower section, which did have one quick portage on a plugged rapid.  Mostly just continuous class 3 and I loved it.

Took a fun 3-day weekend break during spring term to hit the Grand Ronde.  I really like our new method: camp along the road near La Grande, boat half the river, have a layover day, then boat out and head home.  Cooper joined Michelle and Joel for a second try at rafting.  He did better this time, but he’ll never be a river dog.  His current vet has recommended that he should include sardines in his diet.  I’ll let you know how his anxiety disorder is going.

Grande Ronde.  If you look close you can actually see the bald eagle.

Last year I got back on the horse a little better and did lots of day trips, nothing to difficult.  Some fun runs on the West Fork Hood, Breintenbush, Opal Creek, East Fork Lewis and others.  My memory banks went a little off on Opal Creek, about 5 feet off to be precise, and I had a quick pin on some rocks.  It was nothing to dangerous and fun to watch as the crew quickly mobilized to save me.

“the lord had made some very bad choices when it came to inaugurating the garden of eden, in this particular game of roulette everyone had lost, in this target practice for the blind no one had scored.”  Saramago

One time my dad was teaching me how to drive and he told me a story.  The point was, always keep your eye on the road, even if something distracts you.  In his words, he used to have an old step-side truck that he totaled on the S-turn near the farm when he knocked over a can of root beer.  When he reached down to grab it, the truck swerved into the ditch.  I still remember the rusted out hull of a crushed trucked parked on the property.  Years later my uncle Rob was giving me the same advice, “like the time Frank dropped the cherry to his joint on the carpet of the old truck and he totaled it trying to keep the carpet from smoldering.”

Grandma and my new nephew bonding.

Writing this year’s blog in reverse has got me thinking about time travel.  In this year’s highlighted dream sequence, I actually thought I figured out time travel in my dream.  To perfect it, I had to pull myself in and out of sleep: entering and exiting the dream sequence.  I could pull myself into the dream in the past, grab something like a coin, and pull it back through with me to reality in the present.  I was, not unusually, talking in my sleep quite a bit in this dream sequence.  What was more unusual is I wasn’t feeling along the walls to find the door to the bathroom or pissing in the nearest trashcan as I slept walked.  At the end of the dream I found myself traveling to the time of Jesus, or perhaps the future of Jesus.  There were a lot of copies of him, and he was a ghost, or perhaps closer to a zombie.  Like in the classic zombie movies, it felt like a video game.  Anyway, I found myself a bat and started defending myself from the attacking Jesuses (zombies).  But because they were also ghost like, the bat went right through as I tried to crush skulls.  That was kind of the end of the time travel dream.

Taking the time to read dad a little from Rick Bragg's book on the Selway River many years ago.  This would be dad's only trip down the Selway.  To be truthful the rapids scared dad a lot; but he did well.  The Selway reminds of the time dad ran the Illinois River with us.  Again the rapids scared him but I still remember watching him jump in his boat to run Green Wall.  I was supposed to walk up to run it for him but he didn't want to make me run it twice.

“She had succeeded in reconstructing many half-forgotten events and situations, but she had no idea where to enter them.  She had lost all sense of chronology.”  Kundera

I wonder if time travel became easy, what would I really change.  As I head into my late 30’s, I’m not really sure how to answer the question.  Perhaps I would decide to go back and give the Native Americans the technology to build nails.  Perhaps I would decide to keep my feet and limbs out of the time-travel-portal-phone booth.  I’m so happy that I took dad down to see his grandkids when I did.  I remember that I didn’t really want to drive down to Turner that day.  Dad had lots of fun and was generally cheerful. I’ve always found it hard to know what dad was thinking, but his pride in his grandkids was glowing.  Not long before that, in a series of home burglaries, he had lost his glasses.  After we left my brothers we had enough time to have his eyesight checked and new glasses ordered, from Wal-Mart of all places.  My brother delivered the glasses to him that week, as soon as they were ready.  Perhaps in hindsight, we didn’t really need to work so hard on getting the glasses.  He didn’t even wear them as he walked to the store a couple weeks later when he had his heart attack.  Typical Frankie-T.  We love you dad.

Take care, Shane

Carrie's pencil drawing on display at the funeral.