When being up to the ears in hot water is not a bad thing

It has been a few years since last I made the pilgrimage to Breitenbush Hot Springs set deep in the Willamette National Forest in Oregon.

Since I was conveniently in Portland for a conference, it made sense to take a few days leave and make the extra two and a half hour drive into the mountains to pay my respects to this unique place of geographic wonder and beauty.
Yes, there was a mushroom conference on at the hot springs and weekends have never been my time of choice to visit for a personal retreat. I did have to share my cabin. But my roommate, a massage therapist from Whidbey Island, was very diligent about attending her conference sessions and workshops. She also didn't snore. We managed not to annoy each other too much, I hope. Many of the mushroom delegates were not hot springs soakers either, so I had a lot of real good solitary soaks. Especially loved those early morning ones up to my neck in hot water in the velvet dark before dawn.

The first day was pouring rain, but on day two the sun broke through to highlight the resplendence of forests in full autumn vestments.
Possibly the absolute best week of the year for a colour junkie.A number of times I also got to walk the labyrinth in quiet solitude, musing over the deer tracks dancing through the rocks.In between soaks, and walks, I sat in the library or the lukewarm sun on the deck of the lodge, knitting a mossy lichen-lookalike silk/merino shawl, did yoga in the sanctuary or forest shelter, depending on which was available, and revisited Buddha's Playhouse - a quirky cob building at the edge of the river.

A good breathing space.
As always: a full set of pics on flickr. If you like pictures create a flickr account and befriend me. Go on. Do it now. You won't regret it. And it is free.

Dancing through hoops

Brian Hammill is the 2009 World Champion Hoop dancer. The contest is held in Phoenix Arizona at the Heard museum.

He is from the southern Wisconsin Ho Chunk tribe. In 1997 he founded the Native Spirit dance group to share American Indian culture and dance around the nation. Brian is also a musician with a number of awards to his name.On opening night of TALM conference, he joined Arvel Bird with some absolutely astounding dances. I really had the best seat in the house at the edge of the stage, close enough to feel his sweat. If the man sweats. The pace was high but he made it all the fancy footwork seem oh! so effortless.
This dance interlude was definitely one of several high points for me of the 2009 Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums conference. Gave me a new perspective on the notion of dancing through hoops as well.

More pictures on flickr. Preferably viewed as a slideshow . Because this man is all about motion in a big way.

Tribal fusion

On the opening evening of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums Conference 2009 (Portland, Oregon) we were treated to Arvel Bird in concert with Brian Hammill, current reigning world champion hoop dancer. More about him in another post.

Arvel Bird, aka Lord of the Strings, is of Southern Paiute/Scots ancestry. He has won a number of music awards. With a solid background in classical music, he now plays largely flute(s) and violin. His music is kinda Celtic/Native American tribal fusion. Like his blood. I had a great seat for photography: at a table right up against the stage. Perfect too for admiring shiny beaded, furred or feathered bits and decorative things. That which attracts my my magpie eye. Always.

Mixed media: iconography for the next generation

At Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums conference 2009, Portland Oregon, one of the local tribes welcomed us with some song and dance, blessings and prayers at a gala event one evening.
A painted drum, a beaded turtle bag and children jostling for position next to it caught my camera.

Roll on Columbia

For the past few days I have been staying in the Red Lion on the River, Portland, Oregon. It is the conference hotel for the Tribal Libraries, Archives and Museums, 2009 conference and is a truly huge hotel. My room is the size of a small African country with two huge beds and enough floor space over for expansive yoga sessions. The en suite bathroom comes equipped with a jacuzzi jetted (find a maintenance guy first to make it work) bath the size of my whole little cabin on the rez. Yes I do exaggerate, but only a smidgen.

I am often late for sessions because I am lost in the maze of passageways, staircases and corridors in unlinked wings using all my reserves of explorer spirit attempting to find the venues.

The hotel really is on the river: the Columbia river, on the Oregon State side, looking into Washington State.
Another reason I am often late for presentations is that between sessions and in the early mornings I escape into the autumn fresh air to get near, though not within touching distance, to water. I find a lot of Private Property signs, concrete walkways and locks, bolts and bars.
I manage to slip between some of those barriers and lose the crowd briefly for a fleeting glimpse of light upon water, squirrel, heron, ducks and flame of leaf. It all helps to keep my ducks in a row.

Nearer my porpoises to thee: a date with destiny

Recently it has seemed that the most momentous events are happening off the record, when the camera is at home.

This morning as I left the house for my usual dawn patrol of the neighbourhood, the camera held my attention a while, causing me to turn back from the door. No, I decide, I have enough dawn-at-the-dock photographs for the moment. This is just another slightly foggy typical Pacific Northwest dawn, no drama. The camera stayed.

Ha! Live without expectations and you will never be disappointed?

After dawdling a while up the street, pretending avid interest in a nondescript sidewalk shrub to avoid the neighbourhood creep en route to his early morning coffee at the restaurant at the end of the road, I arrive at the dock.

On cue: a school of seven or more porpoises closer than I have ever experienced outside of a kayak! Arcing and blowing their explosive yoga cleansing HA! breaths within a few feet of the end of the dock! So close that, as I crouch, balancing on the salt water rise and fall of the floating platform, I smell briney breath and feel a fine misty spray spritzing my cheeks. I feel that I can almost touch the glistening sleek bodies - the urge is definitely there to reach forward and hitch a ride.

I guess I have to credit the nieghbourhood creep for causing me to dawdle up the road and thus be perfectly on time for the cetacean rondevous.

Maybe too, next time my camera calls me as I leave the house, I will listen.

On the other hand there is a lot to be said for not fumbling with technology at the moment of being up close and personal with porpoise breath.

Up the creek with a paddle

Early autumn and the leaves begin to flare and flame. The season seems to suggest that salmon should be running. A Sunday afternoon with the tide high, I paddle from Suquamish boat launch, through Miller Bay and up Grover Creek (with a paddle). Solo. The FTE, my usual kayaking buddy, is recovering from his epic paddle in more southern waters. Resting on his congenial laurels too, no doubt. And well he deserves to.

Past the houses huddled in the thin October sun on Indianola sand spit, past boats, some already winterized on floats with tarps, past the occasional float plane, past the farms with neat fenced fields running down to the creek.
Water which began choppy and indigo brooding predicting storms to come, becomes calmer, then eerie and stagnant with excess of calm. The flood tide seems not to stir a thing.
Contributing to the strangeness, not a fish jumps, though three weeks ago at Shine Tidelands they burst explosive from the water around my kayak. I do see some very fat seagulls lazily poking at a bloated carcass in the water. Way beyond the Rorschach test reflective upper reaches, three miles up in the real shallows of the creek at the tribe's hatchery, I begin to see skeletons and fishheads on the bottom. But still not a live fish.

Perhaps it is just the prevailing season of Hallmark Halloween creating a surrounding surfeit of Made in China ghouls, zombies and cobwebs, but I become really spooked at this part. So much so that I turn around and paddle myself as fast as I can out of there. A sleek seal escorts me through Miller bay. I begin to be calm again.

Strange, that feeling of being unsafe up the creek. The water was like the proverbial mirror. Possibly the least dangerous water I have been in the whole summer. Flat. Brooding. I am hugely relieved when once more in the swells and white capped freighter wakes beyond Miller Bay, heading home. The wind is razor-sharp chill, straight off fresh snow on the Cascade mountains to the south. Mt Ranier, all set about with a skirt of cloud, is channeling Mt Fuji in a Japanese wood block, huge above it all.
Something really didn't feel right up that creek today. Definite Ray Bradbury moment there: more that just a hint of something wicked this way comes. It wasn't just the boat graveyard, either.

As usual: more pictures on flickr. If you are so fortunate to be family or friend. If not, eat your graphic heart out: what you see here is all you are going to get in the public domain.

Contemplating peace prizes on this noble day

Rise up and follow me/Sons of Hawaii/rise up and follow me
Don't let me down

Don't let me down

Thanks eh Bruddah Herb and takuwan. Spaak you.

Staycation: the summer edition

With autumn abbreviating the days at a rapid rate and yet another year's harvest moon risen and set, I have been reviewing the ways this season's sunny days have been spent.
It has truly been a time of generosity in the staycation department. First there was my Summer of Going Native, volunteering with the Suquamish tribe hosting of the annual tribal canoe journey.
Imagine it (and I didn't have to) some 90 odd (you try counting them in the full moonlight) Coast Salish touring canoes at the end of my street. 10 days of festivities, song, dance, chant and feasting. The potlatch tradition is alive and well. 10 000 people maybe more. Excitement even for a veteran of 25 or more years of Grahamstown Festival and the Maha Kumbha Mela in India. In fact it was a fine mixture of both those.
Mmmmm ...... a really good one indeed. And topping it all: during that time of parrallel universe, the letter approving my US citizenship application came through. How appropriate at a time when I was up to my eyeballs in celebrations of cultural regeneration of the highest order.Then, having barely recovered from that, I was given the gift of time and presence and more time again to spend dreamily living in the moment at home in Haleikeokekai, the little house with knowledge of salt water, the little house on the rez. Watching the prism rainbow refracted light move across my walls with the low angled sun.
This gift of time, the most precious of all gifts, has enabled me to do relaxed morning yoga daily, to have numerous kayaking adventures with the salmon just starting to run, to garden in beautiful late season sun. The colonizing pumpkins have been restrained. A small piece of brick paving and a Lionheart contemplation bench have been created in the backyard lockup (aka the outback). With redistributed and gifted bricks combined.
Isis handprinted textiles has been resurrected once more, this time in the kitchen with the printing of a whole bunch of beautiful handblocked textiles, rich and wild. Then there was the making of an incredible dream of a kayak paddle bag, a kayak hatch cover for the FTE, a birthday gift for a dear friend, completion of some knitting projects and the beginning the Moccasin Project. Broke 3 needles on that last one. It is currently Under Review. But the list of creative projects completed runs on and on....such is the wealth of life, given opportunity. Given world enough and time which the poet once lamented the lack of.Not to mention how I also got to visit with some dear and wondrous friends and have them visit Haleikeokekia. Crossing the water a few times I managed to to celebrate all things Hawaiian at the Seattle Crntre Live Aloha Festival, learn kapa stamp carving, and do a (free because I am a charter member) historic immersion tour offered by the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle International District. I now know a whole lot more about early Asian immigration to these parts. Their current Yellow Terror exhibition, running until April 2010 is incredible. In the collections and paintings of Roger Shimomuro we are up close and personal with attitudes and prejudices towards Japanese people in the Unites States. The subtitle "Always a foreigner" gives pasue for thought in these times. Indeed.

The bank balance is looking decidedly healthier without all that money spent on petrol for the daily commute. I was able to translate those savings into new tyres for the amber golden liquid sunshine Ford Ranger. The hale briefly sparkled with a thorough cleaning and the kitchen table is stocked with fresh organic fruits and vegetables from local Farmer's Markets. Bring on the winter, I am prepared. Gutters are almost all straightened and cleaned of some of the debris.

Yeah! Let's hear it for staycationing and my Summer of Becoming a Citizen.

Oh and I really don't know why I thought of it here, maybe it is all the sewing I have been doing recently or the hanging out with the Wing Luke crowd, but some five or six years ago I encountered an interesting little novel: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. Set it as the discussion book for a book group I facilitated. (Incidentally it was the beginning of the whole Fav Tribal Elder thing but that is another story). Books are powerful. I highly recommend it. It is all about the irrepressibility of art in the face of Chairman Mao's (failed) attempts at cultural re-programming of the intelligensia in the sixties. In China. Of course.

A note from the sponsors: meta-blog post

Sitemeter is installed on this blog. Gives me fairly detailed reports and alerts me to curious co-incidences of sudden interest in my public domain writings and happenings in the unreal world.

Good luck to anyone accessing this blog for nefarious purpose or as ordered by the kremlin. I am sometimes so obscure here that I confuse even myself.

Good writing should be open to interpretation on multiple levels. Baby, my elevator goes way beyond the penthouse. You better believe it. The air is rare up there. You might need your oxygen tanks and whatever other Made in China, end of season bargain basement sale support you can muster from the free barrel.

Art is subversive. Repressive governments have always known this, hence banned books.

The pen is mightier than the sword.

I rest my case.

I am proud of my teachers.

Bury my heart at wounded knee

Usher in a new era of dominion by anorexic Chief Robot Barbie Doll, mistress of bondage of the lowest order.

For Robert the Incomparable as always, a bridge to sanity and not a bridge too far. Freedom's just another word for all we cannot lose. Like Mazeppa Bay.