This is nothing fancy, just a note on Wrightwood

For the last few weeks I’ve tried repeatedly to write something for this blog, something to tell you about life here in Wrightwood, anything to give you insight to my life. For some reason though, it’s been hard to capture those things that I know I would so anxiously desire to tell each of you should we share a cup coffee or even two.  

My dear friend Emily just called me from a gas station in Missoula, MT. Immediately after giving my hello Emily exclaims, “I miss you!” So then I get to thinking, man, I sure do miss you too and for that matter, all of the people who have passed in and out of my life. So then I started thinking about all of those people, where I met them, who they were then, who they are now, who I was then and who I am now.

I’m asked often on tour where I’m originally from and of course, being Texas born and having some of that Texas pride I tell them boldly, “Born and raised in Texas, Sir.” Immediately after I tell them that for the last 5ish years I lived in Portland, OR and from there my mind wanders. I’m taken back to Portland, back to a few years ago when we were all living in the side apartments of Cascade and then I think about Sellwood and about the direction I thought my life was going when I was there. And then I think about Wrightwood and how I ended here in this tiny mountain town. I’m really not sure how I ended up here or how I became friends with Joel and with Jackson, but I did and I am here and I love it.

Each day I’m reassured that moving here was a good decision. In my backyard are infinite possibilities for adventures and inspiration. For work I do what most people pay to do; I traverse thousand foot cables at unimaginable speeds and reintroduce people to this outdoor world that their city lives have neglected. When I want to run I head 15 minutes up the highway to the Pacific Crest Trail and try to keep up with Jackson as he paces along. At night we all sit on our patio table and gaze at the stars and those silhouetted pines that never cease to captivate each of us. I wake up in the morning to lizards scurrying about and engage in conversations with the locals about the new Red Box knock off in the local grocery store, we also talk about the new stop sign their going to put up in town. I can walk across this town in less than an hour and I never thought that would be something I’d desire, but at this point in my life I love it. This morning I sat 50 feet up in a Sugar Pine and drank my morning cup of coffee as the sun made its way over the mountains. So it’s hard not to love all that’s around here, but sometimes you get tired of eating at one of the four restaurants in town and sometimes you get tired of people talking about the zip line and sometimes you get tired of hearing those same dogs barking and so we get out. Most often we escape to other desert/mountainous areas to hike or climb, but on those occasions that we do escape to the city where housing developments abound it’s shortly after that we wish we were back in tiny town Wrightwood, back in our tiny town A-frame home.

My Nana told me the other day that she believes the best is yet to come. So, when I think back to those last 5 years I still do miss all of those people (and I most likely always will) who may have passed in and out of my life, but then I think about today and just how good everything here is.
My life is slow. My life is simple. My life is filled with people that I love.

I’d say my life is pretty darn good here in Wrightwood.

(Welcome to our backyard)

(Summer at a ski resort)

(Pacific Crest Trail)

(Sunshine all the time)

(Climbing day at Devil's Punchbowl)

Also, if you'd like you can follow this link.... http://www.navitat.com/wrightwood - this is what we do for work.

Update by photos...

I knew when I started this blog that it would take a tremendous amount of effort on my end to keep up with it and I have not kept up with it very well. 

I will write soon, I hope. Until then here are some photos of how I/we have been spending our time down here in Wrightwood...

(Millie came for a Southern California visit, a visit long overdue)

                                                           (Just a little Friday hike)

(This is where we live)

(Hiking destination)

(Big Bear bound)

(Climbing around Big Bear, CA)

(We climbed the inner right side, stood on top and watched the sunset..)

                                                               (Making friends)

To the yesterdays...

I heard a fisherman once say that to understand your home you must first leave it. May it be a home in West Texas on a dusty corner street, may it be yourself, may it be those innate characteristics that we each possess or may it be a little apartment on a Sellwood Street. And perhaps we will never understand ourselves and perhaps we may never understand why it is that we must first leave ourselves to only find a purer form of me and of you. And maybe we will just never understand anything.

With every sunset I find myself with a greater understanding of yesterday and of all my yesterdays.

I think it was somewhere in the last 5 years that Portland became home.

Today as I sit in a quiet neighborhood under the bluest of skies, I reflect on those 5 years. I suppose the most accurate description of them is provided through a mere smile, shrug and distant stare.

These last few months have been defined by great change for many of the people I love. It seems that it's now that all are going off to pursue great things. The Turner's are pursuing dreams on the East Coast, the Adam's, Karah, Chris and so many more are doing what they've been anxiously awaiting for themselves and for their families. So it's hard to be sad that so much of the "normalcy" in our lives is changing, but that's life.

I suppose my purpose in writing is to say thank you to my family spread across the Pacific Northwest. These past few days I have felt an immense amount of love, support and all things accompanied in those. You have each blessed my life more than I could ever describe, repay or thank you for. I wish you all best wishes in your net endeavors throughout the Northwest and across the globe. You all made Portland  a home for me. Thank you. I love each of you and will miss you.

I'm not sure when I will understand Wrightwood, but I do know that my home is here now, in a little A-frame house shared in the company of two boys I have also missed over this last year.

This is the start of something good... for all of us.

With love, April

                                                                  (minus the snow)

A word on winter...

     A faded hopscotch grid spanned the entire block this evening, proof of the 80 degree Saturday well spent by many.

     Last week I house-babysat for my old neighbors, below my old house. 4 new boys have moved in to what is now their Miller Street home. I gave them one suggestion for how to spend their summer in the house, how to remove the screens and climb onto the roof to enjoy the best summer breeze in one of the best summer trees. They hadn't thought of removing the screens for access and their smiles and beaming eyes told me they were grateful for the suggestion. Jon and Nicole’s bedroom was directly below my first room in the house, so I was excited to awake to the sunrise view of Mt Hood. However, I forgot the minor detail of being 12 feet lower so the sunrise view of the neighbor’s roof threw me off. I did realize in the short time that I stayed that you can hear everything that goes on in the upstairs apartment. Immediately after Jon and Nicole’s return I apologized for any and all the noise we may have made in the years living above them. I took on the role of mother for the week to care for Simone and Harper. Simone is an attention-craving, vocally proclaiming kitty who will give anything for a pet on the back. Harper or more often pronounced, “Oh Harper,” because he’s just that kind of dog is a 12-year-old, hundred pound pup suffering from severe arthritis who listens to NPR daily and frequents Grand Central Bakery. I learned this week what I believe parenting to be similar to; I awoke each morning to first feed Harper and give him his Glucosamine along with the 4 other drugs prescribed for his achy body, then we’d go on our hour long walk, I guess I should say Harper walked me, to sniff out every inch of the street and to sometimes chase the geese.  I don’t get baby fever like others my age; I just get puppy fever, so it was nice to get my fix for the month and enough to make me realize that my life cannot accommodate a dog right now. But it was still nice. My mom has always called me the “Doggy Whisperer,” but I don’t think she realized how much human food I’d slip dogs to get on their good side. Harper and I were quite the pair though, so there must be some truth to her statement. He’d do that puppy dog smile for me when I came home and on one occasion jumped four paws off the ground for me when I returned (Jon and Nicole both said they’d never seen him in his old age do this), so I took it as his puppy approval. When I locked the house for the final time his bark echoed throughout Sellwood, which I think meant “thank you” and that we’d be friends for a while.

It’s things like this that I am going to miss.

     

     Tonight I’m back down the street. Chris is in Africa. Saryl has moved to her new home, to a room that looks a little more permanent. Ean and I are left here to watch as slowly things disappear into boxes and into other homes. The room Saryl and I shared is now bare and the bathroom drawers are empty. Long walks home like the one this evening and as slowly whatever remains in this bare room find their way to a designated spot of a suitcase I begin to realize that my time here this winter is coming to its end, but good thing it stayed so long (and I say that with a slight degree of sarcasm because it has been far too long of a winter and one should never wear a down coat in June). Next week I’ll be moving to Wrightwood, CA to live and work among good friends.  I suppose I could get a job using the degree I worked so hard on, but I have the rest of my life to do that or to not do that, so for now I will enjoy working outdoors and save that other work for later. I’m usually the planner, the list maker of the bunch, but with this I’ve given up planning because if planning worked I’d be living in Spain right now and the closest I am to that is Google earth. So for now, I’m moving to California and that’s the only plan I need.

It’s been a good winter here, a good, good winter. 

(Oh Harper)

(The brave winterers) 

(Apartment 7)

(Rhododendron Garden- I had no idea this was in our backyard. Sarah was one of the original tenants of the Miller St house)

    

(Painted Hills- weekend trip with the boys)

the easy adventure or something like it...

      Last winter began what continues to resonate within us tonight and what will resonate within us tomorrow and the tomorrow after that.

The Easy Adventure is a story of what our lives look like when we eliminate subsidiary factors so that a focal point is in view.

     To us, the Easy Adventure is what happens when you remove the worry and the fear that often interferes with our living and allow yourself to embrace your life and the lives of those around you. It’s simple…

     The Easy Adventure began here in Portland and has since spanned the globe. It was in Juneau last summer, it was in the rolling hills of that old north state, it was across that little Atlantic pond and now we find it again here on the West coast.

     This winter, now spring we find ourselves moving at a slower pace than we did the last or at least this is where I find myself. I find myself feeling a little claustrophobic in this big city with her big buildings and her big ideas, so I sometimes escape to Sellwood. I escape to quiet evenings and quiet runs along a recently drenched pond with angry geese whose attitudes are too big for their own feathers, but I suppose they are Canadian. It has been quiet, yet good. We’ve all found ourselves in various states of reflection, resolving within our own selves what we believe about this and about that.

Quiet it may be, but it’s still an easy adventure...

     As you grow up it’s natural to abandon some of the things once taught to you, it’s the “simple” process of individuating yourself. It’s ironic though that sometimes, despite how far we may stray from our roots (because sometimes we do and sometimes we need to), we find ourselves among some of those very same ideals that are captured within our childhood photos.

     The idea of the easy adventure is by no means a novel idea that developed last winter, no; it was there in the beginning, something captured under that West Texas sun. I didn’t understand then what I understand about it now. Back then it was embarrassing.

     To the young and impressionable, everything matters. Whatever not deemed  “cool” is unwelcomed and adolescent girls know a thing or two about what being cool is, especially the ones from Texas, especially me. So, unfortunately it wasn’t until high school and college that I learned the truth to all these teachings and observations.

     When I was little and still to this day my grandma, Nana, always wore these “crazy” hats or “crazy” patriotic pants or gold shoes (which today may not be as uncommon as they were back then) or had these “crazy” ideas about this and about that. I didn’t realize then what I realize now, she was an easy adventurer long before I was born, long before Saryl, long before Ean, long before Jackson.

Unfortunately I don’t think I was the only one who didn’t realize this great wisdom from such an eccentric woman back then.

     I’ve never met anyone quite like her. She taught me about unconditional love not just for those that are near to you, but the love for a stranger, love for the outcast. Through her own life she taught me about being passionate about what you do, whatever that may be. She taught me how to live simply and contently.  She was a woman who chose family, whatever this constitutes, over traditional lifestyles. She was a woman whose entire life, in the time I knew her, was about giving to others. She lived off the most meager of incomes, an income that most would laugh at, yet continually gave to anyone in need. I can’t remember a time that she worried about how things would work out for her or how she’d be able to live should her income cease. Her worries surrounded the well being of others and their needs. She has always been a woman that would give you anything she had until she had nothing left to give and then, find a way to give you more. She didn’t care what others thought of her, she simply loved her life, loved her family and lived in this manner. She has continually been a woman devoted to what she believes and will continue to live in this manner. She always made lemonade out of bad lemons, finding optimism despite tragedies.

     She was an unnoticed easy adventurer from the beginning. She didn’t worry about the typical things we all find ourselves worrying about these days, she knew what was important to her and she lived accordingly.

     There’s a strange tension that lies between the past, and present, the once was and the now is. Images of water balloon fights and late night ghosts stories to the now age-old state. But, she is still the same Nana that she’s always been. She may not be present to every moment, but when she is she’s the image that I remember and the image that I will always remember.

     My final project for a psychology class last year was on Eric Ericson’s idea of “family generativity,” the art of leaving a legacy. It saddens me to see the manner in which so many live, the cyclical trap of American dreams, those that choose industry over people.  I wonder what they will have to say about their lives at the end. I wonder what the worth of it will be to them. Perhaps there is worth and gain, I just haven’t heard the benefits yet. Nana is not leaving behind anything materialist, except a handful of handmade jewelry from my grandfather. What she does leave is a vision, a vision of a life I hope to model after, a timeless legacy unable to be captured in some silly materialistic substance.

      For me and to you who know her, I hope we find her legacy inspiring. I hope we live in such a way that understands what she tried to teach us. I hope we live free of this everyday worry. I hope we live a life of love to all those around us. I hope we all live as easy adventurers. 

     There’s no way to force children or even adults to understand the significance and worth of something, you simply have to hope that one day they will come to an understanding and appreciation for that which they’ve known all along. I did. 

The Easy Adventure. 

A note on home...

     It takes approximately 6 minutes to casually stroll to the Lexington bus stop each morning and approximately one Dolorean song to make it home. These quiet morning strolls I look forward to. Same sidewalk, same “For Sale” sign posted (now with new roof), same parked cars, same empty Miller St. house with the same paint can I never picked up and most often all perceived under the same sprinkle of rain we’ve grown so accustomed to.

     But as you cross 19^th, past that same overly priced for sale house (the one with the new roof), you begin to see the advances of spring. The white house’s yard slightly overgrown, daffodils blooming, blades of the neighbors’ freshly cut grass making their way down the streets of Sellwood, each serving as a promise that spring has come and pulling with her the summer sun.

     In May of 2009 I moved into the Miller house, into a part of Portland I’d never experienced before and into a house with the most perfect of views, a view that I eagerly awoke to be greeted by each morning.  It didn’t take long to fall in love with all of this; gardens and flowers, parks and hidden habitats, a dog here and a family there. It feels like a tiny town tucked within the big city and I love it. In May of 2010 I moved out of the Miller house to Juneau, AK a place and a story worthy of its own time. Then, in January of 2011 I moved back into the Miller house but to a different room with a different view. With engagements, graduations and future uncertainties we decided to let the house go and close the door of the Miller house. And so March 1^st began a new story, a new story located just 4 blocks east of that same Miller house in that same neighborhood we love.

      Saryl and I, sisters and traveling companions, semi-permanently-temporarily joined two of our very dear friends, Chris and Ean in their newly established home, something the landlord must never know. Unfortunately there is no view of Mt. Hood to rush out of bed to and unfortunately we are all very thrifty, leaving the heater to its resting state only to wake to the chilliest of morning air. But fortunately our balcony rests above a pond with a blue heron named, “Henry the Heron,” or for short, “Henry,” our feathered friend who greets each morning with us and fortunately we haven’t packed our winter socks. Unfortunately the mailman continues to redirect all of my mail back to its sender.

     The four of us together in this house will be over in a matter of time as plans develop for this and for that, but for now, we are a Sellwood family. Illegally or not, this apartment is our home and we love it. Over the last months I’ve learned a great deal about what it means to be flexible, what it means to be content with what you have and with where you are. When you live within a community you soon learn how to put aside “necessities” you once maintained for living. The girls this summer called me the princess because I hated sleeping on a twin sized bed (my feet nearly touched the end and you had to sleep like a mummy, who’d blame me?), but I did it (until two girls left and I turned their bed into a mega king sized one!!!). Maybe that was rather princess of me, but now as I’ve slept without an actual bed for the last 6 months, I’ve grown to more fully understand those lessons of our youth, the ones about contentment our mothers and fathers told. When you quit focusing on those things you don’t have, like a bed or dining room chairs, you then see all that you do have and I think that’s what my parents always wanted me to learn. I have a really great airbed that I have to inflate on occasion and I am perfectly content because I know one day I will have those things again, but that time is not now. Besides, who was it that said these material wood and glassed things are what make your house a home anyway? Even if the mailman refuses to give me my deserved mail, it’s still my home and I love it.

     For a while we had a Tom Hanks marathon because everyone loves Tom, but now that we’re out of Tom movies we just settle for Monday movie nights together and sometimes dinner or breakfast or weekend days of hiking. The music and conversations are endless, just like our coffee supply tucked away in the coat and camping closet. We don’t worry about looking silly doing yoga in the living room, because we all do it together and we all look a bit silly. This is our home and I couldn’t be happier.

     I’m not sure when we’ll pack our things again or if this next time it will be four blocks down the street that we move and I’m really not sure when this whole temporary living will turn into a not so temporary thing, but for now I’m perfectly content with walking the same path each morning and having a bed that can travel just as much as I do.

     We are four people and one heron living in one Sellwood apartment and we love it. 

      Chris does assure us that we will have 4 dining room chairs soon so that we can have family dinners together. 

RIP Miller House. We loved you. 

                                                    

                  Family vacation 2011 with the Turners. Bend, OR



Also, for clarification, Henry the Heron does not live with us... just near us. They don't allow pets here.