Today's mail delivery included the following items:
One of these figures indicates a lovely, shirtsleeve day, while the other suggests bundle-up-in-a-warm-sweater chilliness. Hmmm.
It was a particularly frosty night, but I had a very big log on the fire, and the indoor temperature was about 75 degrees at 3am. This is what it was at 9am.
At 6:30 this morning, the fairly strong winds of an approaching storm blew some branches into a powerline across the street (in the sheep pasture), causing first the fuses and then the transformer to blow. We were without power for nine hours as tree-trimming and transformer-replacing crews toiled in the rain. When power was restored, and I reset a tripped breaker, I discovered that my microwave oven had been, well, nuked by the power surge. The microwave is the only electrical item of any significance that was not plugged into a surge protector; it was plugged directly into the wall outlet. (I'm not completely stupid, but I am lazy: I had a surge protector for that outlet, but when I moved my refrigerator out of the kitchen and into the pantry, where there are no grounded outlets, I realized I had to string two surge-protecting power strips together for the 'fridge to reach a grounded outlet. One of those strips came from the kitchen counter, and all good intentions to replace it were quickly forgotten.) So now I need a new microwave; no big deal, as this one was getting pretty old and may not have lasted much longer.
Happy End (해피엔드), dir. Jung Ji-woo (정지우), 1999.chronic stress has been shown to raise blood pressure, stiffen arteries, suppress the immune system, heighten the risk of diabetes, depression and Alzheimer’s disease and make one a very undesirable dinner companion.
In humans, though, the brain can think too much, extracting phantom threats from every staff meeting or high school dance.I've been able to find small stress-free islands of calm and luxury, but maintaining that state is difficult. It takes a lot of focus to keep the nagging worries at bay, especially when one is engaging in a completely self-indulgent manner (such as soaking in a hot spring, my current favorite stress therapy) that holds no promise of providing a real-world way out of the rat maze.
Trouble and I are just back from the vet, where the heretofore bundle of love seen at left morphed into a tiny ball of holy hell. He turns out to be a very healthy, nearly 11 pound, 3-ish year old neutered male, one who has definite ideas about what should and should not be done with needles and thermometers. After the vet took him to the "treatment area" ("to spare your arms," she said) to de-worm him and give him his shots , the offscreen ruckus was almost comical. I was genuinely surprised when the vet returned unbloodied. And yet, not five minutes after we get home, this is his demeanor. 
It's looking more and more likely that this is my new cat. He (or she) is the neighborhood cat, a very loving but feisty and very small cop cat (i.e., black-and-white). I started calling her (or him) "Trouble" because, invariably, that is what would ensue when he (or she) came into contact with my landlady's nearly identical cop cat ("Boots"). When Boots came into my yard, he was always looking for Trouble; hence the name. I quickly made friends with this love-starved animal, but I was unsure if she (or he) was a stray or just a wayward neighbor. 
Trouble insists on this profile shot, claiming it makes him (or her) look more dignified. Anything you say, little Trouble. 
It is suddenly nesting season here on the north coast. I'm no birder, so I can't identify the species, but I have a nesting pair who are insistent on building their nest right outside my front door. This is something I just can't allow, and I feel guilty about it. They started to build their nest around a nail in my porch overhang. I knocked down what they'd begun and removed the nail, hoping they'd try somewhere else, but they just keep coming back. They haven't started any new construction, and seem rather frustrated that their nascent home is gone without a trace. It makes me sad to watch, but I can't have protective birds attacking my head every time I pass through the door. I'd be willing to settle for using the back door, but I've already permitted a nest to be built near there, and the inhabitants routinely buzz me whenever I go near it. 
There are other birds here whose presence I warmly welcome. There is a large floral hedge that separates my yard from a sheep pasture; like the birds, I can't identify it, but maybe you can from the photo at left. The hedge itself is perhaps ten feet tall and runs for about 30 yards, and is positively lousy with hummingbirds. I wish I could provide a picture, but they won't come near when I'm outside, and my camera's zoom lens isn't strong enough to catch such a small thing from inside my house. It's not uncommon for me to look out at the hedge and see as many as five of them buzzing around. Even though the novelty of seeing them has worn off, it's still a thrill to have them around. They compete with honeybees, bumblebees, and butterflies for the available nectar, making this already-beautiful hedge alive with winged grace. And so far none of them has attacked me for coming too close to their homestead.
Today I was out taking an unexpected hike through the forest (more on this another day), and got to thinking about trees. I was on a steeply descending stretch of trail, and mid-slope I encountered the large, knobby roots of a very large tree--probably a Sitka spruce--spread across the path. This was a welcome site, as it allowed me footholds to slow my momentum and recalibrate my pace. It occurred to me that Richard Nelson, certainly the best writer and probably the wisest person I've ever known, would stop to thank the tree for uncomplainingly providing this service. While I was lost in this, another of my increasingly frequent WWND (What Would Nels Do?) moments, these thoughts came to me.
This actually solves a number of problems, while creating only a few new ones, as far as I can tell. The floor in that back bedroom is not level, and thus neither was the bed, which made sleeping difficult. I believe I've mentioned that the big window never really closes, making the room fairly breezy and cool. Plus it gets very light very early, and also is in the line of fire of the nighttime airport beacon, and I won't miss either form of light pollution very much. Maybe I'll convert the back room into a dining area, so I can enjoy the morning light and views that way. Hmmm.
My new bedroom, upper left, is in the front of the cottage (southwest corner), has level floors and tight windows. It's near the stove, so it will be warm in winter--I only hope it's not too warm. The bathroom is off this room, which might cause a problem if I ever have a non-amorous overnight guest, but is a godsend when my stomach behaves like it did last night. The move allowed me to put some of the borrowed furniture to better use than I was giving it, and it permits me to have a furnished front room, right and below left, rather than a largely empty space.
One newly-created problem is that the bedroom has a beautiful red and blue Persian rug, and even my color-deficient eyes tell me that my brown bedding scheme clashes with it. Click the picture to enlarge it, and you'll see what I mean.
Over the past three days, I have unloaded and stacked two cords of firewood (see left--there's more than what's shown), installed and set up my landlord's new 47" HDTV (in an upstairs location), and loaded, transported, and unloaded a new refrigerator, which necessitated removing the doors, which further led to an unsuccessful attempt to reverse the doors.
Guess who came to pay me a visit last night?
I knew I had to engineer a way for Batman to get to the Batmobile and get the hell out of my bedroom. Fortunately, I had the tools at hand. At the head of the bed, shown left, is a large window through which I can look out over the Eel and enjoy the morning light. (And through which my companion can see the Rohnerville Bat Signal.) This window has no screen and opens by releasing a single catch. Indeed, it never really closes, staying open just enough to let the night breeze in and keep the bedroom feeling like it's partly a campsite. 
With visions of The Big Chill in mind (in that film, a skylight is opened to let the bat escape, only to have more bats fly in and join the attack), I bravely reached an arm up out of the mountain of bedding and flipped the latch to open the window, then retreated under the comforter, exposing my vulnerable, quivering self just enough to see the top of the window so I could monitor the bat activity. Shortly thereafter I saw a bat seemingly pass through the window; in which direction I could only guess. (Bats fly so erratically that it's tough to trace their paths, especially with one eye peeping out from beneath a comforter.) I guessed/prayed that he'd gone out to fight crime, and quickly pulled the window shut. Perhaps a minute later, the bat, or one of his relatives, fluttered back over my bed. I've no idea whether he'd failed to leave, or whether I had let an incremental bat in, or whether I had been a multi-bat household all along, but seeing that I was out of ideas (and that I had to go to the toilet really badly), I reached out and re-opened the window. 
I still can only guess where the bats come from and whether they are back there right now. Just about the only similarity my cottage has with Bruce Wayne's stately Wayne Manor is that the bat ingress/egress is a closely guarded secret. I assume that they live in the attic, which is supposed to be separated from the house by the ingenious application of a piece of plywood, but even with the help of Braulio the farmhand I could not get this awkward, heavy board to fit flush over the opening (see left.) I presume that the bats laugh at my feeble hope that they will not bother to fly through the 4" opening left by the misapplication of the plywood. What I don't know is if they can get into and out of the attic from the outside (they could have come in through any number of open windows while the place was unoccupied, during which period the attic "door" was on the bedroom floor). They're probably up there right now, snickering at how easy it is to terrify me. Maybe I need to get some really powerful bug spray.
"By the way, I don't have your cell number. Can you give it to me?"
I expect a certain amount of wildlife, even rodents, as there are some places where the interior of the cottage and the exterior of the Lost Coast are not strangers, but I wasn't expecting to find them on the ceiling. The anti-rodent expert (or experts) I soon expect to hire away from the local animal shelter should take care of the four-footed variety but may not have the ground-to-air weaponry for this new threat. 
The exterior is going to be repainted one fine day.
The back yard has some garden plots, a fence line of wild berries, then descends down a bluff to the Eel River.
The table and chairs stay, alongside numerous other pieces of furniture. 
I've been on the Redwood Coast for a bit less than a month now, and I continue to be bowled over by how beautiful it is here. There's truly a bit of everything within just a few miles. Mountains, rivers, and forests (and such forests!) Cities (well, large towns, anyway), small towns, and farms. Sandy beaches, rocky beaches, and seaside cliffs. There's at least a little sun and a little fog nearly every day.
Statement as of 5:33 AM PDT on May 12, 2009
... Hot daytime temperatures expected over the weekend...
Photo: John Filo (c) 1970 Valley News-Dispatch
I haven't switched political parties, driven into a crowd assembled to see the Queen, declared bankruptcy, or caught the swine flu (although I have had some iffy days health-wise lately), which may explain why you haven't heard much of my doings lately. I'm just not newsworthy. Of course, I've spent the last few days holed up at Death Valley National Park, where there is no limelight--although the starlight is more than abundant. Even though it is still April (barely), it's already too hot for me to do much more than cross the valley floor; consequently I spent most of my time in the upper elevations, as well as doing what most overnight tourists in DVNP spend hours each day doing--driving to Nevada for gas. Now I'm safely back in California, and tomorrow I set my sights on Eureka, expecting to drive through rain all day and arrive in the late afternoon.
Where you have fog and mist and tall trees with a solid canopy, you're going to have ferns. And in Humboldt and Del Norte Counties, there's a riot of ferns. 
It's stretching things a bit to call this a Eureka-area photo. It's a view from Page Mountain in the Siskiyous, looking north into Oregon. It'd take me a couple of hours or more to get there from Eureka.
As the day draws nearer, I get a little more nervous. It's not in my character to take blind leaps like this; throughout my life, I've consistently taken the safe choice. I have to keep reminding myself, however, that there is no safe choice available to me anymore. Even if everything goes as wrong as possible out west, I'm not exactly sure what the outcome will be, but I am sure that it won't be materially different from the outcome I'd get by not taking this risk. And by taking the leap, I'm creating the possibility that something may go right, a possibility that doesn't exist in this basement (or, at least, in my basement frame of mind.) It scares me that I've made this decision at exactly the worst moment in my lifetime, and I'm very worried about finding a job once I get out there. But it doesn't scare me so much that I'm having any second thoughts. What I'm doing may or may not be the best choice for me, but I know that it's a better choice than doing nothing.
I leave for my new life three weeks from today. The other night, I watched 'Ornamental Hairpin,' a magnificent film made by Shimizu Hiroshi in 1941. In it, Miss Emi, a Tokyo 'kept woman' played by the incomparable Tanaka Kinuyo, has taken refuge in a mountain spa. When confronted by a figure from (what she now considers to be) her past, she explains:
I can't decide if the ruggedness of the North Coast is what makes it so beautiful, or just what keeps it so beautiful. While I'd love to have a condo with this view, I love even more that it's not possible. About the only "improvement" this terrain will allow is the California Coastal Trail, and it is from this trail (somewhere between Requa, at the mouth of the Klamath River, and Hidden Beach, near False Klamath Rock) that this picture was snapped. This was a tough day of hiking (for me), a spur-of-the-moment decision that brought a lot of climbing and scrambling over perhaps 8 miles with it, but it was one of the most rewarding walks I've ever taken. I look forward to revisiting this trail soon.
This photo was taken at sunset on the Summer Solstice at Gold Bluffs Beach. Gold Bluffs Beach is such a beautiful place. There's a non-descript campground there (which seemed to be hosting some kind of hippie event when I was there), and it's two or three forested miles from the highway, so it's as peaceful as the campers will allow it to be. The beach is very, very wide, and a very relaxing if somewhat chilly place to spend the Solstice. Plus it's a short walk to two trailheads that lead back through the forest, one beginning at Fern Canyon, which I will feature later if I can find a good photo.
When you invest all of your remaining time, money, and energy in growing lemons, derailing your life in the process, you might as well try to make some lemonade. And be thankful that you've at least got some lemons to make it with, which is more than many people have these days. Using your lemons, and perhaps some leftover stewed prunes you canned years ago, to try to make fish tacos is just plain stupid and will get you nowhere.
Up on Big Mesa, you can see for miles and miles in all directions. You can see beautiful things, like cliffs blazing red in the evening sun. Ephemeral things, like the breeze stirring up a dust devil. Improbable things, like the great, delicate sandstone arches. Things that are too wonderful and too fragile to last. Like your love.
ept in the most abstract ways--such as an anonoymous blog--and I have no gift at all for self-promotion. My general opinion of myself is that anyone who would consider either hiring or dating me is so lacking in judgment as to be unworthy of my company. (Insert Groucho Marx joke here.) I really do believe, in the abstract, that I'd be a wonderful candidate for this particular job, but I can't convince myself that I can convince anyone else of that fact.
My county is a well-watered one, with ample precipitation, many springs, and a network of streams in all directions. Our local economy is largely based on the rich farmland and beautiful forests, and for these we can thank our abundant runs, rills, and rivers--or at least we could, if anyone knew their names.
He was half right, although it would become the longest short weekend of his life. It started when he came out of the train station and got into the idling car. He had hoped she'd be glad to see him, but instead she was angry about having to come downtown at 2:30 am to pick him up, as if it had been his fault that the train was late. In fact, she hadn't even bothered to dress beyond putting a coat over her nightgown, and wasn't even wearing her glasses. Well, that's why she didn't come in to meet the train, he thought. Then in the morning, when his offer to cook her breakfast was gruffly refused, he chalked it up to the lack of sleep. He decided to try to lighten the mood.
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