Brenda currently lives in Stoneham MA, but grew up in Mineral WA. She is surrounded by men, with two sons, one husband and two boy cats. She plays trumpet at church, cans farmshare produce and works in software.
The jam count is now up to 4. Unfortunately, we did not get any more apricots this week. Instead, we got half as many plums as I would need to make plum jam. I’m not sure whether I’ll attempt to buy enough plums to make jam or attempt to eat the plums. 18 is an awkward number of plums to eat in a week. Happily, I did have enough peaches and made peach jam last night. Interim reports are that it is delicious. Also, I am now out of jam jars.
I’m thinking of making apple jelly this fall.
Then, while the jam was setting, I went upstairs to finally get all the pictures off my camera. I won’t pretend this is the best edited set of pictures ever, or the best pictures ever for that matter. It sort of goes like this:
But we’re going camping again this weekend and I’ll likely take another set of pictures nearly identical to the last three sets of camping pictures, so I figured I’d clean off the camera. I make no apology for the nearly identical gorgeous pictures of Mt. Rainier.
I’d hoped to nurse Thane through to a full year – he’s nearly 10 months old now. I made it just about 7 months with Grey. But I think this phase of my life has come to a close.
I’m a big supporter of breastfeeding. I’ve also had problem-free experiences. My milk has come in well. My babies nursed easily and right away. I’ve always had enough supply to meet demand – at least when they were little. But I start having trouble once they start crawling. I’ve come to the conclusion that the people who manage to nurse to a year or more have children who sit more quietly than mine do. You should see some of the acrobatic feats Thane has accomplished while attached to me. He’s got two teeth now. He’s started biting. He twists and winds. Unless he’s 90% asleep, it’s not really a pleasure to nurse him. I’ve been pumping for nearly 7 months now — a huge part of my day spent in a super-cold server room. But without the pumping, the supply doesn’t keep up. And finally, my trip to Washington not unexpectedly put a huge dent in my supply, even though I diligently pumped all the time I was away from Thane.
I have three options: keep trying to nurse him and attempt to deal with all these complications one by one, stop nursing him and feel like a failure for not making it to a year, or stop nursing him and feel like a success for having nurtured such a big, strong, healthy kid for as long as worked for both of us. I’ve decided to go with the latter.
There are a lot of emotions around this. Nursing is pretty cool. I mean, suddenly your body does this awesome, useful thing that very few other people can do. Imagine if your belly button suddenly started producing Hershey’s kisses on demand? It’s just awesome. I’m going to be sad when my body turns this new functionality off. I’d kind of rather keep it around unless I need it, you know? But no. If you don’t use it, you lose it. On the other hand, I might now be able to wear some of my more fitted blouses. Or (gasp) dresses. Or get some bras that do not look like they came from the 30s. I’m not going to have this little alarm clock in my head reminding me I better get some private time with a pump or my baby soon. I won’t look down in surprise to see any warm stains spreading when I don’t succeed in this.
It’s time. Thane has shared my body for over 18 months now. I’m ready to get it back to all mine.
I’d like to close up with some numbers. I know lots of people seem go online to find out “what’s normal”. I think I had a pretty normal nursing and pumping experience. I’d also like to give some perspective to people who think pumping is easy. I actually kept detailed records on how much I pumped (because, well, I do love me some data). Here’s how it plays out.
I pumped:
For 26 weeks
For 261 sessions over 108 days
1626.5 ounces
That comes out to:
15 ounces a day
6 1/3 ounces a session (on average)
62 ounces a week
2.5 sessions a day
If you assume I spent 15 minutes a session pumping (I think it’s likely to be more) I spent a total of 62.25 hours pumping. Over those six months, I produced 12.7 gallons of breastmilk.
Please note that I nursed during lunch, during weekends and during time not spent at work. The above figures reflect the amount of milk produced while working full time.
Good job, Tigris and Euphrates. Not a baby anymore
In my life as it is right now, there is tremendous pressure on my time. Working full time, commuting 1.5 hours a day, sadly being the sort of person who needs 8 hours of sleep a night, and taking care of two active curious boys is really time consuming, even when you have a great partner to do it all with. As things I enjoy have slipped away, it’s been enlightening to me what has stayed, and what I still make time for.
I had no idea food was so important to me.
I’m not a “foodie”. I don’t read recipe books for fun, like my sister. I don’t watch cooking shows or read cooking blogs. I don’t delight in new and exotic ingredients. In my perception of myself, I’m a pretty decent utilitarian cook who does enough to provide healthy tasty food for her family with a few heritage recipes thrown in for fun. Heck, when I married my husband I joked that I was doing so because I don’t know how to cook.
But when I look at the TIME I spend in the kitchen making food, it totally belies that perception. This weekend I spent several hours canning. I cooked chili and cornbread for dinner Saturday night (1 hour). I made Crock Posole and Arepas on Monday night. Then I stayed up after I got the boys in bed to prepare smothered pork chops for the gamers on Tuesday. Last night we served: Pork chops with onions, au jus, bacon gravy, bacon, baked potatoes with fresh chives and sour cream, bruschetta with fresh basil and tomatoes on homemade bread fresh out of the oven (my husband made the bread) and corn. Fresh strawberries and blueberries made up dessert. This was a little more overboard than usual, but not wildly so. Certainly, it wasn’t the longest prep I’ve ever had for a game night dinner.
We make roughly 3 “real” dinners (dinners with 45 minutes or more preparation) a week, and several little dinners (boxed mac and cheese, tuna fish casserole, IKEA meatballs, etc.) a week. If it only takes half an hour, I think it’s a moderate prep.
Basically, I spend way more of my negotiable time on food preparation than pretty much anything else.
We COULD do more takeout, although I don’t really understand how that works logistically. We could eat out more, although that’s not great on the budget. (To be fair, my grocery bill is pretty monumental. I’m increasingly coming to understand the impact that quality ingredients have on how a meal tastes and buying accordingly. Mmmmmmm blade steak….. But as a result, I’m not sure that cooking at home saves much money at all.) But frankly, my cooking is better than most food I can buy, up until the $25/entree price point. So I could pay to eat food that doesn’t taste as good as the stuff I cook.
I’m not really sure how I feel about this discovered value. On the one hand, there are many ways these tasty family dinners are considered virtuous. They tend to be healthier than purchased food (although knowing how much butter/bacon I use, I’m not entirely convinced of that). They are definitely tastier than the kind of food we could afford to eat out every night. We eat together as a family almost every single dinner. Studies show that children who eat dinner with their parents at a common table do better in some metrics, like test exams. Theoretically cooking your own food costs less than eating out. And my husband and I eat entirely (delicious) leftovers for lunch during the week, and always have. Finally, I imagine that my children will be grateful (in retrospect) for my great cooking (their Freshman year in the dorms).
On the other hand, the time I spend in the kitchen is time I’m not spending building block towers on the floor. I don’t have time to go for a walk with the kids before bed. I can’t make finger paintings with Grey because I have deadly chicken juice on my hands. Thane roams the kitchen floor, sweeping up old Cheerios and sampling tasty cat food while I work. This is some of the rare, precious time I have with my family and I spend it making bechamel and chopping onions. (Seriously, why don’t grocery stores sell 10 lb bags of onions?) And then there are the dishes. You have no idea how many dishes I can make.
Once a friend of mine came to visit, and exclaimed in astonishment at how there was no takeout boxes in our fridge. I actually hadn’t realized, to that point, that what I was doing was optional — that there was any other way to feed your family. On the other hand, I know it’s possible to be even more into it than I am. Many of my friends are far more adventurous in their cooking and eating than we are.
You can usually find out what’s important to people by looking at where they spend their optional time. We spend ours at church, playing games, cooking and outdoors. I am explicitly ok with the church, games and outdoors. I am surprised by this cooking thing, and not sure if I meant to make it such a big part of my life.
What do you think? Where do you find yourself spending a lot of your time, possibly to your surprise? What do you eat for dinner every night? Do you think the time spent in the kitchen is worth it? If you were my children, would you be glad for the effort at meals, or would you wish I’d spent more time with you than cooking for you?
It’s hot here in the greater Boston area. The last three days it’s been in the low 90s during the day, high 70s at night with the standard miserable amount of humidity. It has been a very cold summer so far. This has been our first real heat wave, and given that we’re in the middle of August, there isn’t a whole lot of really hot possibilities left. We don’t have central air conditioning — instead we have four really big, really have box ACs that we usually put in the windows — cursing and sweating — somewhere in early July. They’re so obnoxious to install and then remove that we don’t put them in until we HAVE to. And now it seems a little late. All that effort for the remaining two or three weeks where it MIGHT be that hot? Turn on the overhead fans, and suffer, says I.
Then on Saturday in his good-night nursing, Thane seemed hot. Really hot. To the touch. All that night he seemed really hot. When we finally got around to taking his temperature, even after we’d administered Tylenol, it came in at 102.4. Ouch. 90 outside. 102.4 in your body. So you’d think that Thane would be super fussy and uncomfortable. Nah. He’s mellow and going with the flow, although he is a touch fussier than usual and is completely uninterested in food. (That’s ok — you don’t need to eat a ton all the time. I do, however, wish he was more interested in beverages. I think he’s at high risk for dehydration.)
So my helpful brother installed the AC in Thane’s room. It’s already one of my favorite rooms in the house. Now, however, I am trying to talk my husband into moving our bed there.
I’m working from home with Thane today. My brother took Grey to and (will) from daycare, and is pinch-hitting with Thane while I work. His temp was down to an unmedicated 99.9 this morning and 99.4 this afternoon, so he’s clearly on the mend. I might’ve sent him to daycare this time last year, but with the swine flu rooting around, it seems like the better thing to do to keep him home. My only regret is that work has AC.
I spent most of the weekend making jam. Ok, that’s not ACTUALLY true, but it feels true. On Saturday, after swimming lessons and before our trip to the pool I made a batch of strawberry jam from $2/pint organic strawberries from the Farmer’s Market outside the YMCA in Melrose. Then I made blueberry jam from our farmshare blueberries. Then I realized I’d totally underestimated just how much sugar jam takes and my paltry 5 lb bag was completed wiped out.
Sunday, my husband and Grey picked up more sugar and pectin for me after church. I put in a second batch of strawberry jam from the farmer’s market strawberries (strawberry is the jam of choice in our household). I have plans for two to three more batches. I have peaches, but I didn’t buy QUITE enough and I’m likely to get some from our farmshare tomorrow. Also, the peaches aren’t quite ripe, so they can stand another day or two of sitting around. I’m also planning on farmshare apricot jam. I got only about half the apricots I needed, so I processed them and will hopefully get another 20 apricots this week, which should be enough. My husband has requested marmalade, which I’ve never made before, so I may give that a shot, too.
So my jam count:
2 strawberry (completed)
1 blueberry (completed – unless I get a lot more farmshare blueberrries)
1 peach (fruit obtained)
1 apricot (50% fruit obtained)
1 marmalade (speculative)
I find jamming intensely satisfying. There is something about capturing the moment – about your hard work turning these ephemeral items into the durable, delicious product that I will eat for the rest of the year, share with friends, give as gifts, and feed my family with.
It’s also something I’ve done since I was a girl. My mom has been making raspberry jam every summer since well before I was, er, 6? I know we had raspberries in Prosser, and I think she planted them in Bonner’s Ferry. Fresh homemade jam plus fresh homemade bread is one of the great delights of summer.
When I stand stirring the dark jam, the hot sugar and fruit smell permeated the kitchen, with sweat beading out and darkening the small curls on the back of my neck, hearing the “pop” of the previous batch of jam setting. Well. Those are the moments that are the last to leave you when you look back on your life.
The next morning we awoke (still a bit jetlagged) under cheerfully cloudless blue skies. Amongst the bustle of the morning, I put my contacts in. One of them was torn, due to lack of light when I’d put them away the night before. It was with great relief that I recalled I had actually thought to tuck two new contacts into my pack the night before. No problem! I got the new contact and popped it in.
Or dropped it rather, I thought. Everything was still totally fuzzy, and nothing felt wrong in my eye. I felt all around. I looked everywhere. I called my husband to help. We searched and searched. A tent isn’t that large a place — there was no drain for it to fall down. But we couldn’t find it. I had one spare contact left. If I put it in, I would have no backup, but after fruitless searching, I had no other choice.
I put the second contact in. And I dropped it too, not to be found! But wait! What are the odds of that? I wear contacts every single day. I put them in and take them out no problem. Dropping two in a row and not having them findable? My husband looked at me and said, “Are you SURE it’s not in your eye?” I think you see where this is going. I took one contact of my eye. Then I took a second. I put one back in. I took it out and put the other in. Nothing. Totally out of my element, I left one of the not-helpful contact in and attempted to proceed with my day. It was hard. The information from my bad eye was very confusing. I had trouble judging distances (very bad on the trail with steps down and up, etc.) I kept closing my eye to rest my poor brain. And, in the rush, despite being on the list, I had not packed my glasses.
Disaster. But what could you do? We started hiking anyway.
Between Golden Lakes and North Puyallup is a truly lovely section of trail. There’s an ancient burn area jutting out from the mountain with blueberries, old whitened tree trunks and spectacular views on every side. As we stood with our backs turned to the astonishing mountain that is Rainier and gazed out on the Cascades, I remarked that anywhere else, this Cascade-view would be worthy of its own National Park. The breeze blowed strongly, whisking away the mosquitoes and flies which were our persistent companions this trip. The sun was hot, but the wind blowing off the glaciers was refreshing. It was the sort of trail that seems as though it might go on for many chapters of the story. The only problem was the one-eyedness, and that indeed was a problem, but it couldn’t spoil my delight.
Between Golden Lakes and North Puyallup
We stopped for a break at what my mother and I, on one of our previous (failed) attempts at the West Side had called “Almost There” Creek. It is not, for the record, almost to North Puyallup. It is a lovely example of one of the cascades the mountains are named for. The water is cold and crystal clear, crashing down on rocks and crags with the exuberance of youth. There are deeper pools and white shards of water. It is surrounded on all sides by vast trees in the primes of their fir-existence. For all the glory of the mountain, this little crossing is actually one of my favorite spots on the trail.
North Puyallup Campground, on the other hand, is not. For the record, the toilet is out at the campground and you have to cross a very perilous bridge and walk roughly 1/4 mile to get to the toilet that IS functional. It’s buggy, hot, overgrown and unpleasant. The North Puyallup River roils and boils with dangerous intensity under your feet as you cross the bridge. The walk up out of North Puyallup is another toil. The view of Mt. Rainier is lovely. That’s about all that can be said for it. Unlike the other climbs/descents, this one is largely in a vast gash from a 20 year old avalanche. You walk through switchback after switchback of nasty scrub, full of devil’s club and clingy, itchy bracken. The footing is insecure. The bugs are plentiful and determined. It was, therefore, a great delight when we crested the slope to come to Klapatchee Camground and Aurora Lake.
Klapatchee had the worst bugs of our stay. (Travelers the other direction told us that the bugs at aptly named Devil’s Dream campground were epic. One described them as ‘Biblical’.) We had used our head nets before, but they were critical to any enjoyment of that lovely little lake. Our campground looked out past the Park to the West, and there was an amazing view of Mt. Rainier reflected in shallow Aurora Lake, which was teeming with frogs, tadpoles and water beetles. (We had no cell reception. I was hoping we would. We had no cell reception anywhere.) We read each other “The Hobbit” in the quiet of a starlit tent.
We climbed Aurora Peak, to the right
That night’s dinner was Mexican Style Rice & Chicken by Mountain House. It was bland, but acceptable. The other meals were to be preferred. I also figured out that the spare contact I’d brought with mere were of a prescription +2.75. My prescription is -2.75. I’d ditched the bad contact at Almost There Creek, and things improved.
It took us nearly 2 hours to break camp every morning, but the third day it mattered less. We only had 4 miles to go. Hiking out of Klapatchee Park campground, we saw an enticing trail break away from the Wonderland, without the standard, “This isn’t a trail, don’t walk here” boilerplate that the park service puts up when it doesn’t want you meadow stomping. A careful analysis of the trail even indicated some maintenance, so we decided it would be ok if we checked it out. We dropped our packs on the trail, and headed up Aurora Peak.
Boy, were we glad we dropped them. It was STEEP. It was gorgeous. We walked through fragrant fields of bee-busy lupine in the morning sun. Towards the top, there were dropoffs that made me cling to the trail with all my might. They were likely not survivable. It is a strange thing to do something which is truly perilous — we’re prevented in so much of our lives from doing anything really dangerous (except driving) by guard rails and warning signs. All that was between us and falling to our deaths on the rocks below was our own common sense and a few scraggly flowers. But the view from the top of Aurora Peak was astounding. We could see our paths ahead and behind. We could see as far as the Olympics (sadly it was a bit hazy). It was extremely buggy, so we didn’t linger long. Even our headnets didn’t protect us enough.
The view from Aurora Peak
We took our time crossing St. Andrews Park, then headed down to South Puyallup. For a lowland campground, South Puyallup is lovely. The toilet there is set against these amazing basalt cliffs. There were very few bugs there (to our relief and amazement). The forest canopy is high and deep. The campground is delightful, even if the water could be improved. We got in early, so we had plenty of leisure time. At one point, Adam said, “Brenda, what are you doing?” Lying there, my boots off, looking up at the dancing branches, I sighed deeply and happily replied, “Nothing.”
The amazing basalt cliffs
We ate two dinners that night. These backpacker dinners are only 300 – 400 calories a serving, which is less than I eat for dinner when I’m dieting and NOT enough to feed a body that’s been working as hard as ours did. We didn’t bring enough breakfasts, so I wanted to be as full as possible that night, and I knew that with a hard, 11.5 mile day the next day we’d need our strength. They were both excellent: Mountain House Lasagna with Meat Sauce, and Mountain House Chicken a la King with Noodles.
Even pushing hard, it STILL took us 2 hours to break camp on our out day. We woke up early, but somehow found it was 9 by the time we hit the trail. We had 2.5 uphills and 3 major downhills over 11.5 miles to do. Even without having to make camp at the end, that’s tough. The first vista of the day was Emerald Ridge. It’s one of the oddest places on the trail – a place where you become unnervingly aware that Mt. Rainier is an active volcano. A red scree falls of to your left — ferrous stone left behind by a glacier. To your right these strange moraines — long straight ridges like the ominous backs of sleeping giants. No loam underfoot, only slippy rock, clattering against your ankles and making footing treacherous. The ferrous glacier-foot of Emerald Ridge Ominous dragon-back ridges at Emerald Ridge
At the bottom of the downhill comes a vast suspension bridge. This is no section for agoraphobics. It is high. It is narrow. It swings. And there is no 911. It was fun. The uphill afterwards, however, was the most brutal of the trip for me. I knew we needed to make time, so I tried to keep up with Adam’s pace. About halfway I had a litany of why I couldn’t, starting with “I gave birth 9 months ago” and ending with “I have a torn meniscus in my left knee” with a few stops in between. Not for the faint-hearted
The top of THAT uphill is Indian Henry’s. Indian Henry is a gorgeous area. However, at the best of times it’s extremely buggy. In this bumper year for bugs, it was nearly unendurably so. We pelted through the alpine meadows, glancing back over our shoulders at the mountain as we ran. We hiked with our nets on, which was hot but preferable to the alternatives. (At one point on the journey, a woman told me that if she had $100 she would give it to me for my hat/headnet combination. I wouldn’t have taken it.) We kept pushing through Devil’s Dream, which was truly infested. The iconic cabin at Indian Henry's
The downhill out of Devil’s Dream was actually not bad. South Puyallup seemed a million years ago. The crossings were tough at Pyramid Creek. The uphill to the top of Rampart Ridge was not so bad. About halfway down Rampart Ridge, we met a couple. I greeted them with the standard backpacker’s greeting, “Where are you headed?” We chatted. Then they said, “Are you Aunt Brenda?” My sweet niece Kay had asked them, they said, if they knew me. The kids were on the trail to meet us. A new wind swept under my weary feet and we fairly flew down the rest of the mountain, until we heard childish voices. My sweet boy Grey ran forward to give (deet-covered, sweaty and smelly) me a big hug. Baz swung his walking stick perilously as he carefully explained what they were doing.
I was thinking about posting some of the my favorite search terms people have used to find my blog. WordPress has really good information and statistics on who reads your blog and how they got there. Some of the search terms are logical, based on what I write. Some of them are quite sad and I wish I could reach back through to the Googler who initiated them. Those are mostly young women and the number of weeks pregnant they are. Others of them are bizarre. How HOW did anyone every find my blog using THAT keyword?!?! And some of them are downright amusing.
The problem is, if I tell you what they are, then I’ll just generate MORE searches on those search terms, and the searchers will think I’m mocking them and pretty soon it’ll get ugly.
Ok, ok, just one.
“prune juice” filled his diaper
AHAHAH! I know exactly which post generated that one. I’m just trying to figure out what you might be hoping to find on the internet with that unusual combination. But hey, if that’s your search term, I’m on Google’s second page.
Ahem. Getting back to my thesis.
A lot of the time I can tell that the people putting in the searches aren’t actually finding the answers to their questions on my blog. And I have an answer now to a really good, really hard question. Which I will repeat many times in slightly varying ways so that people who ask the internet, “What can I do with radishes?” will actually get a helpful answer.
WHAT DO YOU DO WITH RADISHES?
If you’ve ever been in a CSA or farmshare, you know you get plenty of veggies that you’ve never eaten before in your life. Garlic scapes. Kohlrabi. Radishes. The standard procedure for these is to put them carefully into your ‘fridge until they’ve gone bad, at which point you can throw them out or compost them without compunction, maybe with a cheery little, “Too bad my radishes went bad. I was really looking forward to more delicious radish dishes.” Of course, you don’t know any radish dishes. You nibbled a little radish once and it was ok, but you can’t for the life of you figure out what you’re going to do with a whole bunch of radishes. Worst yet, Farmer Dave appears to love radishes and blesses you each and every week with more radishes and different varieties of radishes.
I have a solution to your radish problems.
I’m usually the sort of cook who works from a RECIPE. I measure the tablespoon of Italian seasoning in my chili, by gum. But I could not find a single recipe for radishes that looked yummy. So in desperation I thought: Butter. Butter makes everything better. And oh, was I right!
So here it is. Brenda’s completely unhealthy solution to Farmer Dave’s radishes.
1) Carefully wash your radishes and remove the green stems
2) Slice the radishes thinly (about the width of a quarter)
3) Put a pat (1 – 2 tablespoons) of butter into a frying pan and melt it
4) Add radishes
5) I also added 5 scallions and a handful of chives, because Farmer Dave blessed me greatly. I suspect shallots would be fantastic.
6) Salt
7) Cook, stirring regularly, for about 10 minutes
I think I come closest to being who I really am when I am on the trail. I have a deep, abiding, passionate, and slightly hard to describe love for those Northwest mountains. I take what they are (some of the most spectacular scenery in the world) and layer on top it uncontaminated imaginings from my youth about the mystery, majesty and non-factual histories overlaying the rugged rocks and ancient trees. To tell you how I feel about the Northwest mountains – my mountains – would probably require reams of digital screen, not quite convey what I wanted to feel, and sound like a 13 year old’s Tolkein-inspired fantasy coming from a nostalgic 30 year old. So let me just sum up: they are an ideal of my youth that has not been found wanting with my adult eyes. I love them. And I feel very much as though I belong in those mountains.
The first mile or so is always prosaic, though. My husband and I are no longer 20. We were carrying 40 pound packs down a very steep decline towards the Mowich River under a deep canopy of trees. We were racing daylight, having started at noon with 9.8 miles to go with a major downhill, a major uphill and a more-major-than-I-realized kind of flat to go before we could take our rest.
The downhill was lovely, but unremarkable. The uphill from Mowich River is one of the most consistent and long elevation changes of my memory. We counted. There were 33 switchbacks, many of them quite long. You hear the roar of the river below grow increasingly distant, but there are a good three miles of turning your face to the mountain, walking, and then turning your back on it again.
At last, we broke out of the soft fir-needled path and into daylight. “See! We’re almost there!” I gaily called as we walked between blueberries, bear grass, columbine, lupine and all the familiar flowers of the alpine slope. (The flowers for the entire trip were fantastic and at their prime.)
I thought we were almost there. I was very, very wrong.
That sound you hear is my husband cursing the memory. Erm. It’s possible it was more like 3 miles than one. Oops! Trust me. Two miles, carrying 40 pound packs, at high speed, without enough food (bad planning on that one) and at high elevation? Two miles is a lot. Golden light was streaming into an avalanche-lily strewn meadow as our tired feed pulled us into camp.
A shooting star at Golden Lakes
Lessons learned:
We had brought electrolyte solutions that we poured into a small water bottle. This was fantastic for perking us up after expending lots of energy.
Watch the map for water. We were fine because I planned ahead, but there wasn’t a drop to be had for about 6 miles.
The “Santa Fe Chicken” by Backpacker’s Pantry was extremely tasty and welcomed at the end of the day.
We left the rain flap off our tent. I kept my contacts in until the last moment so I could watch the stars as I slept on the bones of my beloved mountain. We slept well.
In our next installment: Good planning comes to naught, mountains majesty, why I’m glad I got the mosquito netting and the rationing of DEET Golden Lakes (not pictured: swarms of mosquitos)
See that mountain, son? That's where your parents are headed.
The highlight of my vacation was backpacking the West Side of the Wonderland Trail in Mt. Rainier.
I knew I wanted to go backpacking during our vacation. I planned out my daydream trip: four days, three nights, all the best campgrounds on the hardest side of the Mountain. I went to the website to watch the melt rates (it can easily still be iced in the first week in August, scuttling a trip for those of us not up-to-date with our ice axes). I checked the reservations log, which showed that pretty much every campground on the Wonderland Trail was booked solid for our entire vacation. I still dared to hope.
You see (and I almost hesitate to admit this on the internet lest it spur more competition for me), the powers that be reserve 1 camp site per campground a night for last minute, walk up reservations. Longmire, the place to make these reservations, is over 2 hours from Seattle, but less than half an hour from my folk’s house. This is what’s called an unfair advantage.
The day after we landed, after a nice lie-in (well, for us. My poor parents were up all night because SOMEONE WOKE UP for the day after we arrived at home, at about 1:30 am Pacific.) we trekked up to Longmire with an unscheduled week, and a top priority to get some time on Mt. Rainier. I knew what I wanted, but I also knew it was HIGHLY unlikely I’d get my first choice.
I filled out the starting negotiation paperwork:
Day 1 – in at Mowich Lake, camping at Golden Lakes. 9.8 miles
Day 2 – Golden Lakes to Klapatchee Park. 7.8 miles
Day 3 – Klapatchee Park to South Puyallup. 3.8 miles
Day 4 – South Puyallup to Longmire. 11.5 miles
The Ranger took my paperwork and I settled in for the long negotiation.
“Golden Lakes … ok, Klapatchee Park … ok, South Puyallup … ok. Yup. It looks like that will work!”
You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. I felt like I’d won the lottery. I *HAD* won the lottery. Three nights at the best campsites on the West Side — barring Summerland the best in the park?!? On my first try?! I was giddy and fairly floated over the trail to find my parents and tell them the fantastic news.
It was 3 pm. By the next morning, we had to have bought everything we needed (note: all the stores are over an hour away), packed it in our backpacks, driven to Mowich Lake and gotten ourselves on the trail.
Thus began … the epic buying spree of no self-control.
We went to REI, Target, Walgreens and Fred Meyer.
We bought freeze-dried dinners, sock liners, a water filter insert, iodine pills, mosquito head nets, a new backpacking tent, knee braces (3), sunscreen, candy bars, waterproof matches, caffeine pills and squirty cheese. Among other things. It was 11:30 pm before we got home, our bags lying flaccid and empty on the living room floor.
The next morning we rose really, really early and started stripping out packaging, stuffing food and gear into our packs. After the most hurried packing ever for a backpacking trip (and in retrospect, a few key omissions and unnecessary items), we piled ourselves and our boys into the car for the long trip to Mowich. I savored my Maple Bar as we drove through scenic Ohop Valley, the mountain peeking periodically around corners. It was a gorgeous hot, clear day.
We hit the trail head. It took us a while — lots of adjusting of shoes and packs. We poured an exhausted Thane into a baby-backpack on my mom’s back and took a patient but also tired Grey with us a bit down the trail. We swatted flies, not knowing just how much of a prelude to our vacation this would be. We arranged our platypi and tightened our knee-braces.
We were on the trail.
To be continued…. Grey and Thane among the hiking gear
It’s always hard to get back on that digital horse when you come back from vacation. Usually I make regular posts about very minute things that happen in my life. And then I made rice in the rice-cooker; can you believe it?!?! But when you’re on vacation you spend like days and days doing actually interesting things and not blogging about them at all. Heck, not even checking your email or facebook or blogroll for DAYS AT A TIME. (Swoons)
And then you come back with all these things to talk about. And 2000 emails in your personal inbox (950 of which claim that you need more excitement in your nights while offering a solution to said problem). And another 2000 in your work inbox. And several hundred nearly-identical pictures of Mt. Rainier on your camera. And a pile of dirty laundry. And everything on your unwritten “to do” list that you thought “I’ll do do that after vacation; it’s too early now”.*
So if you’re lucky you end up doing one big spill-over post that ends up reading like your bad 9th grade journal: We went on a four-day backpacking trip on the West Side of Mt. Rainier. It was awesome. The weather was great. The bugs were terrible. It was generally fantastic. After that, there were hijinks involving an expired passport, but we made it to Victoria anyway.
So instead, let me give you a picture of Mt. Rainier and the (probably vain) hope that I’ll write smaller bits about what I did. Aurora Lake at sunset Aurora Lake in the morning
*I would like to apologize for this paragraph. I think that so far every single sentence breaks at least one rule of grammar. I am obviously unafraid of sentence fragments, and of starting my sentences with “and”. It’s not because I don’t know better; it’s because I’m a bad person.
Last night was a perfect night for baseball. It had been hot during the day, but cooled as the sun touched down over the Coke sign as we arrived at Fenway Park. There was a sultry, warm-beer-and-humidity haze to the air, as is appropriate in July. A half moon went through shimmering colors as it rose just above the horizon and fell again. And I was in the bleacher seats, hands sticky with Cracker Jacks, watching the action unfold between attempts at the wave, the constant “I believe you’re in my seat” refrain, and Adventures With Beach Balls.
Fenway Girl
For 8 innings I thoroughly enjoyed myself, with my husband by my side keeping me company. Then, the 9th inning, a blown save, a bunch of errors, and a game suddenly tied at 10:30 at night. We stayed through the 10th, but as the night got later and the algorithm for getting home got worse, I had to weigh my conviction that Thou Shalt Not Leave A Game Until It Is Over with the reality that somewhere between 5:30 and 7 am, one or both my husband and I would need to get up to tend to small people. We left after the bottom of the 10th, missing nothing I wanted to watch.
For the record, small people opted for 5:30.
Watching the game was mostly awesome. I really enjoy baseball. I really like getting to watch it live. We even had a babysitter in the person of my brother. My text-message-baseball-buddy was accommodating in making sure I knew why ‘Tek wasn’t playing and that Buehrle was setting a record for consecutive batters retired.
It also made me wistful. When you add another child to your life, for sure, something has to go away. The difference between having one son and having two has pushed a lot of the things I enjoyed off the cliff – my fingers sore from clinging to them so hard. One of those was baseball. In 2003 or 2004, on your average day I could tell you what time the game was, against which team, where we were in the standings, who the starting pitcher was and what the starting lineup was likely to be. I’d be able to handicap our chances against that night’s opponents and I’d have a strong opinion on the most recent trade.
Right now I catch headlines on what’s going on: Diasuke is taking the mantle of team snob from Manny, ‘Tek is beaten up and blaming Beckett, Papelbon is no longer automatic, shortstop is a problem position … but I can’t tell you how the Rays are doing without looking it up. Some of the names in the lineup are unfamiliar. I’m not quite sure where we are in the standings.
I just haven’t had the time or attention to pay to something I have loved. There is a wistfulness that comes from briefly touching on an activity that once consumed you to a greater degree. It’s like going out for a friendly “how ya doing?” cup of coffee with an ex-boyfriend you once loved passionately.
I can hope that this is just a breather in a long and ardent baseball relationship. I can hope to use my wiles to convince one or more of my sons that they really really love baseball and that we should listen to it on the radio alla time. I can hope that this, and other beloved pasttimes pushed off the same cliff of need, will return to me renewed for their fallow time. But right now? I miss my hobbies. OK, I miss my hobbies more when they're not breaking my heart
My Truant Pen 