Back in Ashland

When I look back to my last post, I feel like I've traveled hundreds of miles, both physically and mentally. I've been in Oregon for 3 weeks now, weaving a web back and forth and sideways across this gorgeous, often magical (and I use that word sparingly) place. I've never seen so much sheer physical beauty in one square on a map. Oregon dazzles me on an hourly basis.

Today I sit wi-fing in Ashland's Lithia Park on a picnic table in front of a creek with lots of old trees and rocks strewn along the banks. Children, and often adults, wade in the waters. To my right is a Japanese garden with a lovely reflecting pond. To my left, an open field where moms feed babies, teens play Frisbee, hippies get some sun on their dreads, and it's all a big happy mishmosh of recreating humanity, much as I imagine Golden Gate Park of the 60s might have been. Last night I stumbled onto a labyrinth, walked it, then headed toward the main drag, where I saw a young woman pedaling down the street on a bicycle completely naked. What a fine place to be.

I drove up here yesterday afternoon, after spending the day yesterday in my favorite Mt. Shasta-area town, Dunsmuir. No Cal is still extremely smoke-choked, and Shasta seems a bit down-at-the-heels with all those rings of brown dust obscuring her. But it was great to be back in the funky little town I love and see it still standing, like a hamlet straight out of the 1930s, beautifully preserved, but not prettied up by developers' notions of gentrification.

I was, admittedly, running on a major case of sleep deprivation. Someone could have told me that there was a black bear in a lavendar tutu ready to chauffeur me around town, and I would have said, "Fabulous." The night before, I'd camped at Lake Siskyou camping city, for which the words "unqualified disaster" spring to mind. (Or is it "unmitigated"?) Truly the worst camping experience I've ever had...enough to send me crawling back to another cheap motel. I've never seen such a massive campground in my entire life. Not unlike a massive heart attack. They had an onsite movie theater, arcade, pizzeria, grocery store...need I go on? It was a circus in the wilderness.

Unfortunately, my tent site seemed to be right at the epicenter of the action--and sound travels like quicksilver in the wild. So, just as the bambini and babies stopped screaming, the preadolescents started up, and when they were through, the young adults decided to have campfire chats about their philosophical views on such deep subjects as truck wheel rims...this at 1:30 in the morning. Then there were the young women who began blow-drying their hair at 1:45 am... Meanwhile, I'm in my tent doing all I can to practice acceptance...trying to realize that they're just engaging in age-appropriate behaviors...and quickly losing my equanimity with the passing hours of insomnia.

Finally, a deep, primitive sound began rumbling in my gut, and I was powerless to stop its exodus. "QUIET!!!" I bellowed through my tent. And, by some over miracle, I was heard, and a stillness fell over the entire campground. It was the sound of peace, of children not doing anything remotely childlike, that I hadn't heard in, oh, 3 weeks. I admit, it was among the loveliest sounds I have heard all summer. It left me to my own sweet reverie and a new meditative state: my back against the hard earth.

At 4 a.m., I slept.

At 6 a.m., they woke.

For all the skeptics out there, it truly is possible to break camp alone on 2 hours sleep with 5 little kids watching you in 20 minutes.

Bend

The previous 2 days--which I know have names...but I've been traveling too long to remember what they are--I spent driving down from Mt. Hood, into the fun town of Hood River, through some blazing views of Mt. Hood, into forests so deep that the cell goes away, over high mountains, then down into desert that greatly resembles the New Mexican landscape, then into farmland, and finally into Bend, which seems to be the Cuisinart version of all of that. I spent two days there trying to avoid getting hit by mountain bikes, marveling at testosterone in all of its variegated manifestations, and chastising myself for not having the proper footwear for anything more than the stairclimb to my hotel room. My former compatriots at Outside magazine would be shocked at the disrepair I've fallen into. Bend, it seems, shares much in common with SLO: lots of active young people, some historical buildings, a liking for good clean fun, lots of athletic possibilities, a downtown with plenty of upscale shops and restaurants, a nice body of water running through downtown. It's sort of a remote hotspot in Central Oregon--the only place you'll find for many miles with a Target, a Home Depot, and a Trader Joe's. Oregon has not embraced the big box with the same fervor that other places have, thankfully. However, it was nice to find somewhere I could buy a can opener.