Deciding to leave this place feels a little bit like breaking up with a lover. Even if you know that it’s the right thing to do, and the right time to do it, there are still so many small things that are heartbreaking to say goodbye to. The way that you are struck one morning by the fact that you will never see their toothbrush again, or that plan you had always had to travel to South America together when you got old, or that you can’t share this really fabulous tomato with them.

There are so many little things that I’m saying goodbye to here. Even though I feel good about the decision to move to Olympia, I’m sad to say goodbye to my little tomato patch, and to all my grandiose plans for a real garden next year. My little writing studio/bedroom with the little white stove that kept it always too hot or too cold and the bats in the roof will be sorely missed. I won’t be here for the snowfall this winter to track the skunks and coyotes and bobcats that I saw during the snows last winter. I won’t get another chance to really for real this time harvest all the blackberries and preserve them. I will never see the black bear that is rumoured to live around here. I won’t convince the song sparrow in the back yard to eat out of my hand, nor the skunks either. I won’t get to see the first snow fall on Mt. St. Helens from my deck, and I won’t enjoy my morning cup of coffee while watching the mountain steam. I won’t ever learn exactly what sort of fir trees those are that line the driveway. I won’t get to do a 24-hour sit once a month in the hemlock grove down the hill.

There are a lot of things I’m looking forwad to about being in Olympia, but I’m glad that i have 6 weeks or so, because it will take me at least that long to say goodbye to everything here.

I walked over to the neighbor’s house and mowed down his cat’s ears (which he calls dandelions) today. I used his riding mower (vroom! ) and it took me 90 minutes. He wrote me a check for $40, which was nice, and told me a few stories. He’s turning 85 years old next month, and he’s been around this part of the country his whole life. We were talking about Mt. St. Helens, and he started talking about how his father and grandfather were both loggers. I thought it was just a case of an old man getting distracted, so I let him tell his story, but it turned out that he did actually have a point connected to the mountain.

I guess back in the 20’s it was standard for the loggers to all get 2 weeks off over the 4th of July. So every year, the whole family would load up in the two cars and head out to Spirit Lake to go fishing for two weeks. It would take them two days to get from Dryad, Washington up to Spirit Lake in the Model T Ford and the old Chevrolet. The Chevrolet was the first model of car to have rolling windows in it. They would make it almost the whole way in the first day, but the second day was spent on puncheon roads for about 15 miles. That 15 miles would take all day. I had never heard of puncheon roads before, and he explained that it was a road bed made out of saplings about 4 or 5 inches in diameter and cut to about 10 feet long. Over 15 miles of that, and you were bound to get stuck several times. And the puncheons weren’t anchored at all, just laid on the roadbed, so as soon as you accidentally spun the tire a little bit, it would spit the puncheon out, and your wheel would be stuck down in the mud between the two adjoining puncheons. So you would have to jack the whole car up in order to get the puncheon back in there underneath the tire and be on your way again, until the next time you got stuck.

I ended up spending about an hour listening to his stories. He’s also super conservative, and has been a logger most of his life. He has Rush Limbaugh books on the mantle. When he got out of the service after World War 2, he sold his car for $1000 and went into the logging business and has worked for himself ever since. It was interesting to me that, during the course of our conversation he said something about how it’s too bad that we aren’t utilizing our own natural resources instead of buying them from other countries. I figured he meant that we should be cutting down more trees, but then he said, "Someday I suppose they’ll develop a useable alternative fuel, and then we won’t have to buy so much oil." And that led to a discussion of electric cars (Preston is planning to convert one), and solar power (Willard, the neighbor, started using solar powered radio towers for his crews back in the early 60’s). It was really encouraging to hear that even this ultra-conservative could see the need for alternative and sustainable fuels.

Tags: alternative fuel, logging, oldtimer stories

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I can hear the Canada Geese down in the big fields at the base of Burnt Ridge these days, and I saw some in the field behind the library. The wasps are working hard to seal up their nests. The big-leaf maples have been dropping leaves for a while now, and the driveway is covered in hemlock needles.

It’s definitely fall, although the predicted high for today is around 80 degrees. And that means that Preston’s and my migratory tendencies have kicked in as well. It seems that both of us had migratory ancestors, and we were both raised migratory as well. Preston was halfway through high school before he went to the same school for more than a year at a time. For me, fall meant it was time to move back to my mom’s house, which was rarely in the same place for more than two years.

Just a few weeks ago, the idea of moving closer to Olympia came up. I like the idea, but the thought of leaving this property literally had me in tears. I really love it here. But as the subject has popped up here and there, I’ve found that I like the idea more and more. A week or so ago, I told Preston that if it was purely a matter of living there or living here, I would choose to live there (Olympia), but there’s the problem of inertia. I don’t know if I want to move badly enough to pack up and actually literally move everything we have here.

And then last week, Preston and I had a really interesting conversation about our collaborative relationship and how it seems that we are working towards really different goals right now. We talked about me just taking off for the next couple months and living in my car. I figure I can do that pretty easily for around $400/month, and live fairly well. But then as we talked about it, we realized that I’d probably be parking my car up near Olympia. And if I wasn’t living here, Preston wouldn’t want to either, so he would move to Olympia also. So it occurred to us that maybe we should just both move to Olympia and see how that goes.

While we were talking last week, the idea came up that Preston "owes" me some time off, after I supported him while he went to school last year. I told him that I wasn’t really interested in having a relationship based on a market economy. But after we started quantifying what it would really cost for me to live on my own, in the manner that I would be happy with, I started thinking that maybe some quantification is exactly what we need in order for this to work out. So, if I could live well on $400/month, and Preston is willing to provide me with those things that I would otherwise have to provide myself (food, shelter, etc.) then I am willing to provide a value of $400/month to that system. That means that I could work 10 hours a week for $10/hour. And if there are things that I want in addition to the basics, I would work extra time for those (for instance, I would really like to take kung fu, which I think will fill the niche that kickboxing filled years ago, so I would work an extra 5 hours every month in order to pay for that). It will be far easier for me to find work in Olympia that I would be willing to do for a few hours a week, not to mention that I’m more likely to be able to lead plant walks and such, there being a market for those things there but not so much here.

And at that point, we can start quantifying what it’s worth to Preston to have someone who keeps the kitchen clean, or fixes all of his dinners. If I spend an hour a day doing dishes and making dinner, then perhaps I will work only 5 hours a week, and my net value added to the system still equals the $400 that it would cost me to live on my own. And if at any point, this system isn’t working for either Preston or I, our resources are seperate enough that I simply move into my truck and stop utilizing Preston’s resources or contributing to that system.

Because we have this collaborative relationship, it is possible for us to talk really logically about our individual goals and how we can best attain them, without talking about breaking up. If I moved into my truck, that wouldn’t have any effect on the leng-term outlook of our relationship, nor would it indicate that we are any less committed than we ever were. It would just mean that we are honest about what we need out of life right now, and that we are not interested in holding each other back from getting those things.

So once we had decided all of this, we started looking around for places to rent, and that made it seem, you know, like, real all of a sudden. We are actually moving. And we were joking about how it must be a fall thing. And then we started really thinking about it. Last fall was when we moved here.The fall before that was when preston left Seattle to finish school at Evergreen. The fall before that was when we moved to Seattle. The fall before that was when we moved to the Boise North End…and pretty much every fall before that, back to the fall when we very first met and moved in together, we have moved or somehow radically changed our lives. We wondered if we would ever just get used to that pattern and be ready for a move every fall, instead of being surprised every year like we have been so far. I wonder if the Canada Geese are surprised by the sense of urgency they feel as the temperature drops every year. Do they think that *this* year they will stay in this northern paradise for the rest of their lives, but then get unexpectedly restless every September?

Went for a walk last night, and on my way back, the funny old guy who lives next door flagged me down. "You still looking for work?" he asks. "Oh, here and there," I answer, noncommitally. Turns out that he wants to pay me $20 to ride around on his riding lawnmower for an hour or so. Hard to turn that down.

I’ve finished the final rough drafts of the things I need to have written in order to send off the proposal. I need to spend the next couple weeks doing market research and writing a bio, and I’m still right on track for having everything sent in on the 15th of October.

I got the notice in the mail yesterday that the first set of illustrations from my mom is here, and I can’t wait to see them. I need her to write a bio for herself also.

And I could actually use y’all’s help on the market research part. The publisher that I am sending the book to wants a list of *every* similiar book already published, with an explanation of how my book is different from each one. I know that you all don’t know exactly what my book is going to be like, but if you could share with me the titles and authors of books you know of that are written in a naturalist notebook style, I would be much obliged. Feel free to include books that you did and didn’t like, and if you were feeling motivated enough to write a brief description of the book, so I would know basically what it’s about, I would love that very much.

Briefly, what I am considering a naturalist notebook style, is a non-fiction collection of essays written by a naturalist discussing natural phenomenon through their daily experiences. The books might be organized chronologically, like a journal, or they might be organized by topic, like by species or bioregion. A field guide would only count if it included a *lot* of personal stories about the naturalist’s encounters with the plants or animals referenced.

The more of these books I can come up with, the better. It seems counter-intuitive, but publishers don’t really want fresh new ideas. They want some proof that there is a market for this new book, and the best proof is that books similiar to this one have already been selling. So ideally, I would have a long list of successful books in this genre, with an explanation of how my book differs in a small but delightfully significant way from the previously published works.

And while I’m asking for help, if any of you have any experience reading and editing essays, I would love to have you read my drafts so far. I’m at the end of what I know how to do with the revision process, but I know there is still room for improvement. I would love to get some feedback from folks who have a sense of how constructive criticism works. Just drop me an e-mail or a comment if you’re interested in helping out. Feel free to pass this along to anyone else you know who might be interested in reading essays or who might have book recommendations for me.

Tags: work, writing, publishing, market research, editing

Feeling a little guilty for not going to work this morning, but I figure what’s the point of having a job that you aren’t required to go to, if you don’t stay home when it’s cold and raining and you don’t feel like going? So I started a fire out in my room, and I’ll spend the morning working on the book. I haven’t done any writing this week, and it will feel good to make a little progress. I finally have some ideas for how to improve the intro.

This afternoon, I head up to Nisqually to pick up a dryer. The clothesline season has ended quite abruptly here, and it’s been raining for 3 days now. I might give the Sidhefires a call, and I’ll probably stop in and visit Eric on my way through Oly.

It’s good to be able to do whatever I want to do, for a while.

Tags: work, book, writing

P: Are you okay?
Me: Okay?
P: Ya, you seem a little glum.
Me: Glum?
P: Yes, glum.
Me: (laughing) Glum.
P: Glum.
Me: No, I’m not glum at all. I’m the opposite of glum. I’m anti-glum.
P. Well, you’re certainly not gleeful.
Me: Gleeful?
P: Gleeful. Because glee is the opposite of glum.
Me: Glee.
P: Yes, glum is the…
Me: (interrupting) I think we should get two dogs and name them Glum and Glee.
P: (laughing) Right, we could get one really droopy dog to be…
Me: (interrupting again) Gweedleglum and Gweedleglee!!
Kitty Magoo: (entering the room) I hate you all because it is raining outside!
Me: Look, it’s Gweedleglum Magoo!
P: (still trying to have a logical conversation) …you know like a bassett hound or something, and then maybe a border collie…
Me: Gweedleglee!
P: …right…
Me: Say it! Gweedleglum and gweedleglee! It’s fun!
P: No.
Me: Say it!
P: No.
Me: Say it!
P: The Oracle says there will be no saying of the word gweedleglum.
Me: See, it’s fun!
P: (laughing) Dork.
Me: (laughing) Gweedleglee!