On the Trail

A Berm's Tale

2009-11-13T10:07:00.000-08:00

It was the most fun birthday present I've ever given my wife. OK, the birthday I proposed to her was in the stratosphere by comparison. But when it comes to normal birthdays, this was a blast.

Ever since we moved in, she's been commenting on our fixer-upper front "yard" that masquerades as an office parking lot. First we got the indoors in order. Then while we could still mess up the front yard without the neighbors noticing, we used the front as "storage" for all the work we were doing in the back -- clearing out shrubs gone amuck, tearing out an old shed and turning part of it into a decent chicken coop, building a deck, setting up garden space, planting a small patch of lawn. Meanwhile, the front served as part parking lot, part yard sale without the sale.

Now that the back was done and growing, it was time to work on the front. I had 22 cubic feet of dirt and mulch hauled in and together (that's the "funnest" part of the present) we started moving and leveling that mountain into a nice looking berm. My wife was the woman who "went up a mountain and came down a berm." (You had to see the movie.)

Portland has two seasons -- rainy and less rainy. Actually the less rainy season can be really nice and there are even days in the rainy season when you stop and realize there still is a sun in the heavens. We have what you call a modified Mediterranean climate. The only time I've been to the actual Mediterranean (Turkey along the Aegean coast) was in December -- not your time for dry, balmy lounging by the sea. I've never figured out the modified part, but I understand the concept: dry summers, wet winters.

The best time to work outdoors in Portland is in the summer, which is why I waited until Kim's birthday -- at the start of the rainy season. Last Saturday, we decided to make a date to our favorite nursery to see what we could find on clearance. The weather report (which is more lottery than science here) said it would be clear until noon, enough time for a couple hours of dry shopping.

On the way, a few light sprinkles landed on the windshield of our pickup. Proper Northwesterners think of sprinkles as solar residue and keep moving. As the sprinkles turned to a steady rain, Practical Kim suggested we stop and buy a couple of umbrellas, my culturally appropriate NW truck not of its own volition having one. By the time we got back in the truck appropriately armed, it was pouring.

Three of us (daughter included) stood under the two umbrellas (why was I thinking three -- umbrellas, that is -- extravagant?), moving rapidly through the nursery finding the best deals on plants we really wanted -- Korean dogwood, Chinese redbud, vine maple, thunderhead dwarf pine, papoose sitka spruce. Water cascaded down around us like this was Niagara. The nursery guy, dressed culturally appropriate in rain gear from head to foot, graciously helped us find the plants we really wanted -- whatever was on sale or clearance -- and fast. At some point, wife and daughter headed for the dry shed/office, while nursery guy and I sumo wrestled sizeable container trees.

Rain I can handle. Thus my shorts, boots and sweatshirt. Cold rain is another thing. That wetness was getting frosty and when the lightning and thunder hit, the rain doubled its intensity. At the cash register, a sign read "5 food cans for the poor = 20% discount on all purchases." We left our greenery at the checkout, dashed for the pickup and drove to the closest store to buy 8 cans (I didn't want to look like I was doing it just for the discount).

In the end we got $340 worth of trees and shrubs for $160. Oh, and an inch of rain in a couple of hours. Back home, rain still pouring down, we left the trees in the truck bed for a drier day, and hit the (hot, indoor) showers. Happy Birthday, wife!

The Cycle of Life

2009-10-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

Funny how wild and lefty people think you are when you start talking about composting and raising urban chickens and recycling and all these ideas that are as old as Adam. Doing something slightly old-fashioned is now considered subversive. Whatever label you want to slap on it, I love it.

We enjoy the food out of our garden – squashes, beans, tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce and more. We toss most of the kitchen scraps to the chickens who leave only the hardest of the squash skins. (We even recycle the egg shells once they’ve dried out.) Then twice a year we clean out the chicken coop. Today is the autumn clean out.

Kim and I are taking out all the straw and chicken poop and whatever else is in there and laying down a new bed of clean straw. You can’t throw chicken manure directly on your plants – it’s pretty toxic stuff. But it is great in the compost, which will take all that “clean out” and turn it into a nice mix for next year’s garden when the cycle starts all over.

There is really very little that gets thrown into our trash these days that is of organic nature. We don’t recycle the cat litter, mostly because I don’t know how that works, but I might look into it down the road.

We do separate everything out in our trash. We have a recycle bin for what the waste management company picks up every other week – food containers, paper products (that I don’t wind up burning in the fireplace), etc. Stuff the chickens won’t eat and that is too slow for composting or things like weeds goes in the yard waste bin for by-weekly pickup. Bottles and cans and Plastic bags go back to the stores. Waste management also picks up any glass. The actual trash bin gets full, but we have the smallest bin the waste management company provides. And then there is all the reusable stuff we save for taking to the thrift stores.

Most of the furniture in our house we bought at the thrift stores or in yard sales. Portland also has some great re-use locations for construction materials and other resources, so we take advantage of these places as much as we can. Even our new soil is really someone else’s yard waste recycling.

In China, we didn’t have to do our own recycling. We’d carefully put our “trash” out every morning and the neighborhood trash pickup woman would go through it all to find what she could sell to recycling – very little of it wound up in the dump. And we did our own composting for our postage stamp of a garden.

It is not just about helping the environment, as valuable as that is. It is about being in touch with life and the Creator and understanding that every phase of life has meaning, just as every stage in our human lives – from pre-birth to death – has value. Some people think you can waste stuff because there is an abundance. I still don’t see how cleaning up my plate can help all the starving kids in India.

Even so I do think that God intended us to appreciate the cycle of life and to live a life of thoughtful conservation. Which is why, I think, he called Adam and Eve to be gardeners and Jesus to be a carpenter. Something valuable for us 21st Century Urbanites – learn how to get back to the soil and to the cycle of life. Chicken poop, er, coop, here I come.

Sunflower Seeds in Setting Sun

2009-09-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

When it comes to seasons, I definitely prefer spring over fall for one very specific reason – more sunshine. A standing quip of mine is that my favorite day of the year is December 22 when the days start getting longer. But there is something to a warm, sunny September day that begins and ends with that feeling of crispness heralding the oncoming autumn.

The critters are definitely mindful as well that the seasons are changing. Yesterday, we were sitting on our back deck lingering over dinner as the sun set. One of our giant sunflower stalks started shaking, almost violently. Then I noticed a squirrel trying to navigate the less-than-stable stalk.

In China, I often ate sunflower seeds with fellow travelers on the train or when stopping by to visit one of our local friends. Now I grow these giants for the fun of it, a gift of seeds from my sister. But they also make a great addition to the feed supply of our hens – just cut off a whole sunflower head, even part of the stem, throw it in the henhouse, and watch it disappear over the next few days, seeds first.

As the heads ripen, we’ll cut them off and save them for the hens and wild wintering birds. Gardens really are for sharing – the poor, the neighbors, other creatures, all as a means of giving thanks to the Creator. It is in growing a bounty that we learn to recognize the handiwork of the Master Gardener. A gardener is how God first appeared to Adam and Eve and how Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene on that resurrection morning. Something to be said for staying close to the food cycle – reminds us of the Source of life.

A Weekend for Memories

2009-05-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

Twenty-two years ago tomorrow I embarked on a most courageous journey in tandem with the love of my life. It has been a wonderful adventure every step of the way.

This weekend happens to be Memorial Day weekend in the USA. For some it is a time of reflecting on those who have died. For others it is the launch of the season of summer fun. There will be parades and picnics and visits to cemetery plots and hikes in the woods and camping trips and visits to the shore and, where it is warm, fun in the sun and water. A weekend, hopefully, spent with family and/or friends.

My mind goes back to that Memorial Day weekend over two decades ago, the one where I said “I do” till death do us part. It’s a good thing I couldn’t peer into the future, as much as I would have been tempted to do so had there been that option. Best to take life’s pleasures and pains one day at a time. I remember so clearly looking out across the campus in Kirkland, Washington, where we were married. Kim and I were following the photographer’s orders to stand here or there, all for the cause of making memories.

It was a clear blue sky day, “glorious” Kim called it and for more than mere weather reasons. The rhododendrons were at their peak and in the distant west, across the Puget Sound, the peaks of the Olympic Mountains shown white in the brilliant sunshine. My mind wasn’t looking very far out at all. Just taking it one step at a time. It’s all mapped out, this day, and good thing, too, for, unlike the weather, my mind was shrouded in fog. Not a fog of fear or doubt or anguish, just all fogged up from anticipation and joy and excitement. A day to savor the intoxicating mist of love.

For this old trail walker, that day was a trailhead to be remembered and cherished long after. Thanks for the journey, Kim, and for the many more miles ahead.

Marking Time

2009-05-15T09:00:00.000-07:00

Amazing how time moves so quickly. The less we have of it, the faster it goes. Explain that to me from the laws of physics.

Today his mother and I make the journey with our Number Two Son to his new college home. School doesn’t start for another 15 weeks or so, but this is the day he registers for his classes and gets oriented to the life of a collegian.

It’s not a long journey. Stephen has chosen a school not far from where we now live, George Fox University. And yet, though the miles are few, the distance from home to that dorm and campus life is a very giant step. For him and for us. You’d think that having done this already with our Firstborn, we’d be prepared this time around. Sure, we know the routine. But the heart, I sense, is never going to be ready. No sense putting it off.

The university calls it “Genesis,” this day of orientation, when future students and their parents learn the ropes of college life. Genesis, a time of fresh beginnings.

Life is a trail (and a trial, too, sometimes!) – as much as we’d like for time to stand still, there is only this incessant moving on. The important thing is to savor each step, each turn in the path. So we’ll savor this one as well, his mother and I, including the pains of separation and the thrills of expectation.

That Rite of Spring

2009-05-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

I often wonder if my partiality to this season is because I was born in mid-April. Whatever the reason, there is something very vital, rejuvenating, invigorating to me about Spring. It is indeed the time of new beginnings.

Few activities symbolize Spring more than putting a garden in, something that tends to occur in May in this northern clime. I like the whole process. Adding the previous year’s compost to the garden plot and tilling it in. Buying the seeds or starter plants. Plotting the layout. Smoothing out, then mounding the soil. Putting additives (or not, depending on how organic you prefer to go). Planting the seeds or the starter plants. Staking and stringing. Watering. Then taking in with your eyes what your hands have wrought.

I love kneeling in the dirt (though that gets harder with age) and feeling the dirt with my hands (gloves withhold some of the pleasure for me), the warm sun casting an approving glow on the scene. “Dirt” itself has much of life in it, especially soil that is healthy… the myriads of microorganisms as well as that great visible sign of organic health, the earthworm.

I’ve been putting in gardens lately and also creating some landscape where there had been only the rudiments of suburban yardage. I sense in all this activity something very productive – the created expressing something of the image of the Creator. Long live Spring!

Sports for the Rest of Us

2008-12-03T09:00:00.000-08:00

Hope and Hannah are playing club volleyball this winter. Hope has been competing on the JV team in her high school and her coach has made it clear that if you want to stay on the team, you have to improve your skills and the only way to do that is to join one of the winter out-of-school programs.

I don’t begrudge the fees charged for these programs. The coaches that lead them are underpaid by our public schools as it is and the facilities can cost a lot. I don’t even begrudge the wealthy who can afford the programs. But we were so thankful to find a program that runs at one-fourth the cost – volleyball for the middle class. Even then it is a stretch, especially with two girls involved. We see the twice weekly activity and training as a healthy investment in their lives and we’ll do our best to make it happen for them.

I do wonder how the poor manage it. It seems that all too often the most “gifted” athletes in America are the offspring of the more financially privileged. They are the ones who attend the schools with better programs. They are the ones who can afford all these outside camps and clubs. They are the ones who can foot the bill for top coaches and equipment. Doesn’t make up for true grit and commitment or even raw talent. But 18 years of disproportionate advantage can leave an often unbridgeable gap.

The sports scene is a mirror of what happens in the academic realm. Our kids’ schools are underfunded, but not near so the schools in less endowed neighborhoods, where families cannot make up the difference in fundraising and fees. In China we used to tell our friends how equal America’s educational opportunity is. I’m not sure I believe that any more.

But I am grateful for a volleyball program that exists for the rest of us, at least the middle class rest of us. I love their concept – the guys who run it volunteer their time so that the “rest of us” can afford to play. For more information on this great volleyball program in the Portland area, go to PDX)))VB Volleyball Club.

Now what about the truly disadvantaged – the ones with absent parents, or less interested parents, or parents who just don’t have the means though they are doing their best, or kids who just don’t have enough raw talent, or even kids who don’t have grit? Surely those who have much (folks like us) have an obligation to share with those who do not – our time, our finances, our expertise. Such is the true American dream – that all have real opportunity because we look out for each other. Thanks to Brick Street and David Anderson of PDX)))VB Volleyball Club for looking out for our girls.

Boys (and Girls) In Black

2008-11-18T08:16:00.000-08:00

They gathered in the early morning dark wearing business suits like shadowy Mafia figures in Jersey. Only they were high school kids and one was mine. Stephen’s speech and debate team was headed to yet another weekend tournament and I was along as driver/judge.

The driving was the easy part. Talk about multitasking. I sat facing two teams of two debaters each, my left hand running the stopwatch, my right hand taking notes and marking time left for the speaker, my mind racing through all the things I need to be looking for as the multiple minute intervals ticked off. Forty minutes total for each round. Then in less than a nanosecond I had to determine the fate of each team and individual before the next round of teams entered the room.

By the end of my six rounds, I was exhausted. And I knew more about the French system of health care than I ever cared to know. Let everyone suffer for lack of medical attention! I’m taking a nap.

I was a high school debater long ago. But I’ve forgotten all but a vague sense of “been there, done that.” Now I’m reliving the experience from a new perspective – dad, driver and judge. Driver is not bad, but Dad is best, especially when Stephen brings home a huge grin and a recycled judo trophy with a Spartan “2nd” marked on the front.

It’s amazing to see so many American high school students spending their Friday evenings and long Saturdays debating real and theoretical social issues of our times. And loving it, even when the aging multitasking judge gives the other team higher marks. Each student super-politely thanks me and shakes my hand as he or she files out of the room, knowing the fate of the second-hand judo trophy rests in my hands.

Pilgrimage to Parkdale

2008-10-16T09:55:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, Robert and I went over to Mount Hood’s eastern side to get a cord of firewood. Bill, whom Kim and I had met a couple weeks earlier, called to say he had just cut up a good supply for the winter. While we loaded the pickup with seasoned and split white fir, I asked Bill if he knew a good place to buy Gala apples near there, Parkdale being apple orchard country.

He spoke of neighbors just down the road who had an organic orchard and offered to take us up there when the truck was loaded. We spent the next couple of hours meeting John, a visionary beyond his means. The guy had more ideas per minute than a whole university think tank. He’s been delving into architectural and artistic designs, remaking the buildings on his farm until a creative wonder.

He takes ancient art forms such as Babylonian or Minoan patterns and mixes them with modern ecological images depicting lost habitats or vanishing species. He combines Mayan structures with Chinese forms to create eclecticism a la Northwest.

What keeps this dreamer fed and housed apparently is his wife who runs the wedding site business offering awesome views of Mount Hood in pastoral settings. She also takes her husband’s attempts at cottages in Russian peasant style and rents them out to tourists looking for a bit of rural peace and tranquility. Good thing. John’s run through the extended family resources already and his organic farm’s been a white elephant in the income department. His apples sure are tasty, though.

It’s an odd mix, this rural neighborhood not far from a crossroad called Parkdale. In between Bill and John is the son of some well-known mega-rich man and nearby is a guy who never amounted to much by anyone’s standards, not even his own.

All this oddity made for a productive day. We returned home with a truckload of relatively inexpensive firewood, a boxful of apples for making into applesauce, and eight delicious looking green peppers ripe for stuffing for supper later this week. The day was relationally and intellectually stimulating. Good time getting to know Bill better. Invigorating conversation with John that spanned the globe and the genres. And a great father-son day discussing the unfolding economic mess and the special vitality of rural America.

As a friend named Jim said last night, the difference between a trip and a pilgrimage is that, with pilgrimage, what you do along the way is as important as your destination. You may not even remember where you were headed or why, but you sure had fun doing it.

On the Campaign Trail

2008-10-06T09:57:00.000-07:00

There are numerous ways to spell “manly”. I saw one of the better spellings as Stephen was all spiffed up in coat and tie heading out for his first all-day high school Speech and Debate tournament at 6:30 this past Saturday morning. Robert is well-known for his ability to address issues long, hard and deep. What is not so known is his slightly younger brother’s fine honed skills at giving Robert a run for his money in sibling debates.

Back at Xi’an International School, one of the boys’ teachers said to me, “I know how you will vote.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve been listening to your son.”

“Which one?” I asked.

If you listen to both of them as a barometer of how I vote, you’ll be thoroughly confused. They are guaranteed to find the opposite side on any issue and, likely as not, flip back and forth in a race to see who can come up with the more solid line of reasoning.

Two days before the Saturday tournament, Stephen turned 18. He’s joined the voter registration club at school and is doing his civic minded best to get out the vote this November. Both boys are thrilled at their first opportunity to vote in a Presidential election.

Thursday evening of Stephen’s birthday, we had the usual cake (carrot), ice cream and gifts. And we watched the Vice Presidential candidates debate live on TV. The presidential race has been closely followed and vigorously debated in our house by all six of us over the past many months. In a home full of teenagers, a presidential debate or a convention acceptance speech is guaranteed to gather us all together as a family. You can be sure where we’ll be on the evening of November 4.

Recent weeks have had us glued to the radio, too, as we’ve followed the mercurial changes in the economic picture. At least I can track the kids’ discussions when they are talking about international tensions or Wall Street meltdowns. Better than their arguments over quarks and real atom-splitting. Sometimes I wonder what the neighbors make of our backyard dinner conversations.

How do I spell manly? It is getting hot and bothered about injustice in the world and then finding creative and level-headed ways to do something about it. Look out world, my kids are growing up.

Making Peace with a Brute

2008-10-01T10:10:00.000-07:00

My son, Robert, and I have started a project that is either going to make us stronger or kill us. I think it is making a man out of him and an old man out of me.

We’re building a shed on the side of our house. It’s an open sided shed with a saltbox roof (I’m showing off new vocabulary). Yesterday, we rented a jack hammer, cleared away some asphalt and dug down into hard clay to prepare the shed’s foundation.

We’re working against weather (winter rains start shortly) and other work (Robert starts a new part-time job today and I have my writing and other responsibilities). Yesterday the weather was perfect – it only rained a couple minutes when the sun came out. Otherwise it was mostly cloudy and a high around 80.

With any new equipment there is always a learning curve. Such was the case with this jack hammer. It sounds intimidating right from the start.

When we were living in Xi’an, I watched for a whole week outside my office window as a worker stood on narrow columns with his jack hammer – three stories up. He was on the concrete columns he was tearing down, each column about the width of his own body. Day by day he worked his way down to the ground below, drilling the columns one small chunk at a time.

I’ve never liked the sound of a jack hammer. I remember living in Taichung, Taiwan, in a row house. Our next door neighbors went at the place for a week, demolishing everything but the load bearing walls and roof . Kim finally left during the day and took the boys (then toddlers) off to who knows where while I sat at my desk dreaming I was inside the mouth of a dental patient while the dentist was drilling a molar.

So it was with some anxiety on my part that we brought the rented power tool home – all 60 pounds of it. Lugging it around is like hauling a man stone drunk across the ground (not that I do that very often).

As far as power equipment goes, this jack hammer is pretty simple. Plug it in, hold down the button on the handle and let ‘er hammer down. Soon my eyes were swimming and Robert’s breakfast milk had “turned to butter”. But as the day wore on, we made peace with this “Brute” (as it is called) and found that it made a day’s job out of a week’s worth of work. I wouldn’t say the work is any easier, but it sure makes it go faster.

I was thinking that other more experienced hands would call this child’s play until we returned the tool to the rental center. As we were leaving, the clerk told us, “Take the rest of the day off – you deserve it.” And so we did.

Seeing the people for the trees

2008-09-22T09:47:00.000-07:00

Kim and I hiked in the nearby foothills again on Friday. September is a golden month for day hikes with little rain and mild temps. Friday’s skies were thick with forest fire haze causing the summit to loom like a phantom over the lower hills. We hiked a short stretch between Flag Point and Lookout Mountain on the east side of Mount Hood at around 5,500 feet altitude, then scavenged for firewood in the national forest and stopped for fresh produce at a farmer’s stand.

A day like that does much to clear the head – nothing like those mountain trails and tall trees. Hiking in the Badger Creek Wilderness, we felt far from civilization. Our ears reveled in the awesome quiet. Just the two of us and our Maker.

On the way home, we saw a sign for firewood for sale and pulled into the farmhouse yard. The guy was vintage Westerner – libertarian to the core. He generally sells small bundles of campfire wood, but promised to call us when he had whole cords cut up. At least he has a phone.

The financial world was reeling from the Wall Street meltdown, but this man might as well have been on Mars. His main concern was the nearby forest fires. “They ought to stop preserving the forests, just sell off the deadwood at 25 a cord. When the deadwood builds up, then these fires get out of control.” Far from being a tree hugger, this man disliked trees. “I’d rather live in a desert.” And the expanding human population. “Just pay the people and let their houses burn down.”

At a farmer’s stand on down the road, we picked up corn, blueberries, raspberries, and peppers (at 2 for a dollar). This farmer was also concerned about the fire – he’d been out fighting it the day before in his other role as fireman. To him the trees are valuable for what they do for his environment. He loves living in close proximity to the mountains and forests.

Such a variety of trees and people in this world. I’ll take them all. Just hope they can take me!