Okonagon roadtripping: a whole lot of goats

As if I ever need an excuse for a road trip, autumn brilliance urged me into a 300 mile round trip drive to visit Pine Stump Farms just outside Omak in the Okonagon.I crossed Lake Roosevelt on the Columbia Princess, the little ferry which runs between Gifford and Inchelium, to drive through Colville Indian Reservation, stopping off at Rocky Point campgounds, on North Twin Lakes for a little walk in the seasonal finery. There was not another human about, just me, the Canadian Geese and a whole lot of magnificence on the fiery end of the colour spectrum.Goat milk cheese, yoghurt, friendly people in Carey the homesteader and Elizabeth the WWOOFer (World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) and a menagerie of equally friendly animals made the visit to the farm really worthwhile.
In Tonasket there was an air of expectation and people of varying ages in witches hats and skeleton suits in the streets. I am guessing the town was doing a Halloween. I found an early supper of a delicious fresh made vegetarian burrito in a little family run Mexican restuarant down a side street.

Days are short now so I had to do a big part of the return journey - the part through Sherman pass - in the dark. Ha! aren't I just the biggest and bravest now! A load of rocks in the back of the truck kept me stable. Besides the road was clear and dry anyway.

The Inland Northwest in autumn = exquisite beauty. By some unplanned little quirk of timing it seems I caught the colour at its peak. And I didn't even have to compete with crowds of leaf peepers as one would have in New England. Some girls have all the luck and somedays it is this girl who draws the winning hand.

Looking for larch

When I drove over to the Okonagon for the Barter Fair, I noticed a strange phenomenon. Amongst the conifer forests there seemed to be some which were dying, browning. Or rather yellowing. It concerned me. They were too sporadic to be burned. Was it a disease?

Turns out that these are Western Larch (Larix occidentalis), an unusual and unique deciduous conifer. Before they lose their needles for winter, they turn a brilliant gold.I went on a small circular drive over Sherman Pass, to Republic, Curlew then back down the river to Kettle Falls and home to admire these trees which, any other time of the year, have hidden themselves amongst the evergreens.

I have heard locals call them Tamaracks. Not to be confused, however, with the Tamarack Larch which grows in North Eastern United States and exhibits the same autumn colour and behaviour.
The sky was blue. The trees were gold. There wasn't much traffic on the backroads I chose, except for camo and brilliant orange vested men with guns walking on the side of the road or driving in vehicles fitted with rifle racks. Ah ha! hunting season is in full swing.

I decided not to wander the Forest Service roads and paths. I am thinking might be wise for me to get an orange sash to wear on my solitary ambles. Though I am Not-a-Bear these trigger happy okes might not recognize this.

Another satisfying day on the road wherein I also collected a further truckload of rocks from the stash I discovered in early spring beside the road. Sometimes the most brilliant scenes were where I could not pull over so the photographs really do not do justice to the day.I did take the opportunity to photograph a property sign which has caught my eye for a while now: "My Parent's Estate". Informative and unpoetic, it is rescued from bluntness by the design.

Sky dance before the snow

Of course now the skies are low and heavy, but I found this on my camera from a few mornings before the snow.

The rat trap

This is the way it ends. Neither a bang nor a wimper, but the metallic clang of a cage trap springing. And there you are. Trapped and transported at whim of your captor.

Well this is the way the Bushy Tailed Wood Rat Housemate story seems to be playing out.

There were just too many sounds of remodelling without a permit going on in those sacred still hours when I clean out my belly button fluff. Something had to change. I had to tell the letting agent. I only rent Skunk House. Taking housemates and unsanctioned remodelling are both definitely in contravention of the lease. Not to mention that increasingly funky smell of crystalizing rodent pee.

Eviction papers were served with with strawberry jam on whole wheat toast, some sparkly things to attract the pack rat eye and peanut butter coated almonds as a side dish.

Cardboard and paste houses do not stand up well to regular chewing by rodent teeth. I do hope, however, than my former housemate is getting along alright tonight in the strange alfalfa fields of Farm-to-Market Road. She showed such spirit in the cage, stamping her back feet at me and eating everything in sight.

The house is kinda quiet without her rustle and bustle inside the walls. Dearest little Wood Rat I do hope you know: it wasn't you, it was me. Oh how those longest whiskers in the world haunt!

My first moose

Taking care of my Macbook's needs required two 170 mile round trips to Post Falls, Idaho this month. Subsequently I have discovered that an Apple shop has opened in downtown Spokane. That will significantly cut down on the mileage and thus will probably become my Macospital of choice in the future.

This month, however, even though one of those good parcel courier services in this country would have taken my money and delivered my laptop door to door, I chose to drive the pesky ailing little machine over there myself. It saved me packaging, the petrol cost the same as the courier service and I got to experience some roadtrips in the beautiful autumn coloured landscape.
And, as usual, I made discoveries. One of the most important of which was that Spirit Lake Books and Coffee, besides being just the most comfortable kind of old book and internet cafe type road stop that I adore, serves the best bagels I have ever eaten. Big, fresh, soft and succulent mounds of dough sprinkled with, well everything, if you pick the Everything as I did.New York bagels. Now there's something I didn't know about. If they serve this kind of bagel in New York City it might just, combined with the fact that my nearest (only) blood relative has a claim on some felines and their attendant in the Bronx, get me to consider going to the infernal place though I do not consider urban areas or places with a lot of tarmac and concrete holiday destinations.
In the meantime a hour or so by amber liquid sunshine Ford Ranger over the Flowery Trail pass (currently lightly snowed) and there's Spirit Lake Books and Coffee. Just where I need it to be.

A little second hand store in Spirit Lake also yielded the most realistic looking aged toy cap guns. Just what I needed for my Murder Mystery Night display.

En route back, on one of my journeys I met a moose on Flowery Trail pass. The picture is bad because, well, you try taking a photograph on a narrow mountain pass with hairpin blind bends whilst travelling solo and driving a stick shift vehicle. Somehow in the moment of sighting Ms Moose I just wasn't channeling my inner Durga that successfully, so only had two arms.

Needless to say I was very grateful for Ms Moose having revealed herself to me. I drove the rest of the way down Flowery Trail to Skunk House with the opening music from Goeie More Alaska (Northern Exposure) playing in my head. Recently I discovered that the TV series was filmed in Roslyn, not that many miles away from me in Kittitas County, Washington State, and not in Alaska at all. So much for Cicely.
But then with the snow I woke up to this morning, my little winding snake town could be an Alaskan film set. And it is only late October. Wheeeee life in a mountain ski town in winter coming up! Can't wait to try those snow shoes I stole from the Fav Tribal Elder.

Snow awakening

We interrupt the programme to bring you a weather alert: there's freshly fallen beautiful snow on the mountain in my window.

Endings

The gardening season at Skunk House came to an abrupt end these past few weeks. First with frost and then this weekend with light wet snow.

In just ten days the backyard lockup went from abundant brilliance to blackend burned compost material. Too late! All those marigolds I grew for garlands shrivelled and lost, killed by the cold hand of frost. Many of the cosmos also met their end whilst still in bud. I did, however, get to save a small packet of seed from this year's sowing so will have continuity at least of my favourite magenta

All that's left to do out there is rake the maple leaves from where they fall on the street out front, spread them around the base of the trees and on the beds for winter warmth and composting. Goodnight garden.

Catch-up: Okonagon Barter Fair

I have got so behind myself with so many things this month any minute I am going to swallow my tail like the Ouroborus.

I do have some excuses: for part of the month my Silver Bird of a Macbook pro was in the Macospital over the mountain in Post Falls Idaho.The computer might have been out of commission but life carried on.

In fact I discovered, with a forced digital retreat, that I had a lot more time to do things. Do I sense the beginning of a resolve to put myself on a digital reduced diet?

Hmmm. I plead the fifth on that one. For now.

Early October I went to the Tonasket barter faire. Or the Okonagon Family Faire as it is called in its website and on its sign. Everyone calls it Barter Fair though, so I am not sure about the two names or the cutsy spelling.

Barter Fairs are fairly common in the parallel universe of the thriving counter culture of hippies, dreamers, musicians and nomads who make up a percentage of the population of this country. The Tonasket one takes place in Spring and Autumn. In spring to barter and exchange items made during the long winters. In autumn to barter or exchange what summer has produced.

I like the thinking behind these. I am all for a less cash reliant society and more focus on a goods and services way of life. So I was looking forward to Barter Faire, and not just for the road trip either. I wanted to see if it was a viable market for my own creations. In fact I restrained myself from any impulse spending at the Marcus Cider festival the week before because I was saving for Barter Faire.

The venue is the same beautiful mountain top just outside of Tonasket, where the Conscious Culture Festival was held in June. For this barter fair, vendors camp in circles within circles, alongside of their wares gathered around a big stage where music happens all weekend long. Wood, vegetables, honey, homemade or second hand goods and goodies, animals, plants, homemade wine.....a jumbled array of items and a whole lot of partying.

A lot of smoke too. And of course food vendors had their place.

To walk these straw strewn aisles is a good couple of miles. The comparison is a mix of a pow wow and a magnified version of the Village Green at the Grahamstown Arts Festival, but much more down to earth in terms of the products (with a big second hand alley of tools, clothes and junk). Vendors camp next to their stalls in varying forms of shelter. I found the organic nature of the stalls pleasing - there is none of the terminal sameness of regulation 10x10 vendors tents which one so often finds at Farmer's Markets and Art and Craft shows.

I did see one or two vendors who had lists of what they would like to barter, but mostly it seemed that the barter ethic was slipsliding into a cash economy. Which was fine by me too, as I had dead presidents and was looking for that which had drawn me to this slightly discordant place.

I wandered a bit aimlessly in the crowds before I excahanged my dead presidents for some really delicious artisan aged goat milk cheese from Pine Stump Farm in Omak. My eyes were smarting from the smoke drifting through it all from fires and braziers built to cook or warm or just for hospitality, sitting and making music and sharing spirit around. There was the feel of expectation. People were waiting for the party to really begin. After dark

I had only purchased a $10 day entry ticket as opposed to the $60 overnight camping ticket. There was not a whole lot calling me to camp. I am not inclined to enter the dance these days.

I returned to my amber golden truck and enjoyed the drive home nibbling on cheese all the way, satisfied with my single purchase and acknowledging that I probably hadn't taken it all in.

The future is now: Leonine dreaming

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”

Give me back my broken night
my mirrored room, my secret life
it's lonely here

Ah yes, let us go, then: ragged claws, scuttling the floors.

Of silent seas.

La puerta del corazon: long rusted

Anniversary of gain: opening a door

There's a frosty white world outside this morning and I have been up since 3 am scanning nine year old photographs, making an album of the first few weeks in the United States. It's on Flickr and Facebook this time - an anniversary demands this, and look at me how oh so adept I am with the online social world of sharing. And caring.

If yesterday was set aside for reviewing the losses, today is time for gains. At 3 pm on the afternoon October 19, 2001, my first encounter with US soil was Seatac airport.

Maples were glowing golden and the tallest trees in the world, set about by the biggest ferns, laid out a welcome I was slow to realize. The first few weeks I felt suffocated and imprisoned by the Pacific Northwest rainforests which I later came to love. The clean smell of cedar, spruce and fir mingling with the woodsmoke from fires will always bring back those first few oh so foreign weeks to me.Ferries, coffee, mocha. I learned these languages quickly. John Wayne in a pumpkin? Am I hallucinating - where I come from we eat pumpkins. What's in the water here?

Everything was such a dreamscape back then. I had stepped into a movie set. People all spoke with American accents and drove fancy cars on the wrong side of the road. I was in National Geographic Channel one day, Disneyland the next. Abandoned on a strange planet with not a single familiar person around.
The hardest thing in my whole life was the loneliness of the first years in the United States. Utter strangeness in everything and not a single familiar. I took out a library card and did the only thing it seemed I knew how to do in this foreign place. I read books: novels about immigration and exile written by immigrants, exiles, refugees. There I found family and conversation. Of sorts.Consumption. I learned American ways of coping very quickly. I leaned to shop to keep unhappiness at bay. Online, in person, 24/7. America, the great big Alice's Restuarant where you can get anything you want.

I arrived at Seatac with 2 suitcases and a hand bag. It took a whole Allied Van and a half ton pickup truck to move me over the mountains seven months ago. Now I live with a pack rat (aka bushy tailed wood rat). Something's got to go. Pack rat take note: your eviction papers have been served.

Friends. My old and good ones have found ways to keep in touch. In coming to the US I gained a whole lot of new ones, most of whom I trust though there have been some unexpected betrayals and knives in my back that take a long time to recover from. Did I read the signs wrong? How do you tell who is a friend when all your cultural indicators are off key?

Weight. I arrived at Seatac a little underweight but strong from the Eldorado years. The stress of letting go of everything had honed me down to essential sinew and bone. In the intervening nine years I have gained forty pounds and lost the fascination with photographers. One of these is a good thing. With three digital cameras, two scanners, a high quality printer and late model Apple laptop at my disposal, now I stand behind the lens.

I take back my identity. If I can find it somewhere under all those extra layers of flesh and under all the piles of stuff which mount in every living space.

I might have lost the rich resonance and expressiveness of South African English but I have gained a whole new double vocabularly in American English. And a great excuse to spell badly. Everybody does.

I have found new landscapes for solace. What they lack in deep familiarity of home land, they make up for in beauty. Table Mountain? Drakensberg? Cockscomb? Ah yes, remember them. Mountains I have know all live on in the mountain which fills my kitchen window. The karoo? Nieubethesda? Try Eastern Washington. Soap lake and the scablands. It's not quite the same but could have a similiar effect on dreams.

Anniversary of loss: closing the door

It's that magic of three. Three times three.

Nine years ago today I closed the door on a boarding house in a little town of saints and sinners on the southern tip of Africa. All my worldlies reduced to two suitcases in the back of Gilly's car, and a couple of bags strung about the body. Red Riding Hood casting herself to the wolves with only two pairs of shoes, a couple of magic carpets and some dresses.

Leaving.

Robert the Incomparible was at Port Elizabeth airport to wave a white handkerchief. I gave him my bicycle lock and chain. Wasn't going to need it in the Land of No Crime where I was headed.

Gilly and Darling E wandered somewhere. R and I sat at a table in a cavernous space with nothing left to say. My ticket was one way. Afterglow and Sarah Machlaghlan came seven years later.

Though I didn't realize it at the time, immigration has turned out to be one of the hardest things life has ever required of me.

Skunk House is strewn, this frosty morning, with old photographs, after a positive orgy of a weekend of frantic remembrance in between painting and journeying (more on that later).

Yes. this weekend I have been cataloguing my losses. Eldorado. Bathurst. Niew Bethesda. Rossouw. Sun, sand and salt water. Kleinemonde, Keurbooms, Drakensberg....words which roll slightly foreign off my tongue now, requiring me to shape my mouth in ways which have become unused.

Kitchen tables with bright colours on the walls, floors, furniture. Friends and smiles. Isis and creativity. Eldorado. Eldorado. Eldorado. The golden myth found then dissolved to dust once touched.

And most of all: landscape and language. Lost. Lost. Lost. And then lost again.

Seems kinda ironic somehow, somewhere, that this all takes place during the time of Vijayadashami or Dusshera when Durga truimphs once more over the evil king.

Makes you think, dunnit? At least I was dressed for the part and the dress still fits. I shall wear it today. Do this in rememberance.

Clouds illusions: on the western edge

I saw an antelope speeding through the sky...no wait it isn't Christmas, nor that a reindeer. Just a dreaming sunset on the western edge of town.

True to nomad imperative to constantly explore new territory, took a Sunday afternoon walk in a westerly direction across town just recently. An unexpected effulgence above the trailer homes and detritus of human living.

Apologies for the sporadic nature of posts recently. Have been in (forced but blessed in some ways) digital retreat whilst the silver bird of a Macbook went adventuring to the Post Falls Apple hospital.

Ciderclops in late afternoon autumn sunshine: the restoration of emptiness

Marcus, population 161, is the smallest town in Stevens County. Each year, come October they host a Cider Festival which draws more than a thousand people.

Unfortunately I had to work so managed to arrive rather late in the day. I missed the parade and the actual cider pressing. In fact the party was pretty much over. The whole area had a strong crushed apple smell. Following my nose, I found first a small cider lake then an eight or ten foot high mound of apple peel and pulp at the one end of Ciderclops, the famous Marcus cider press.

I wandered the arts and craft stalls which had not yet packed up, and admired some beautiful felted bags, handcrafted stick furniture and handmade papers that stood out amongst the generic craft bazaar wares. I listened to a little music noticing that JB (as in the whiskey) the "Flying Hawaiian" native Hawaiian Fed-Ex delivery driver was on drums with one of the bands. I know him, but would he even recognize me and is it even worth it to say "Aloha"? Besides cider, this festival celebrates local music in a big way. But it was the tail end of a long working week for me. I was tired and didn't linger. I had laundry and another day of painting a library on my mind. The strong sense of having arrived at the desultory tail end of the party and in a different mood weighted me. The return journey the sun was low. Lake Roosevelt shimmering blue and silver and the long shadows stretched out ahead of me in the golden glaze of late afternoon autumn light helped to assuage the niggly little feeling that I am missing way too much of a leisurely life these days.

Well would YOU vote for this candidate?

It is election season in the USA. Mostly the campaign posters and billboards just irritate me with their terminal monotony and getting in the way of landscape as they do.

However with this creative use of available situation, I am not quite sure that the message is entirely positive. Is this an endorsement of the candidate or a commentary on the lifestyle should he gain the coveted position of Sheriff? And those vultures? Who exactly are they waiting for? One thing I do know: there sure are some dang fine metalworkers around these parts. And some of these here folks are not lacking in the humour department neither.

Storytellers One, Border Control Oficer Zero: an autumn excursion

I have been warned that autumn is quick here. I recently seized a blue skies and sunny day moment to take a quick little road trip to Canada to see if I could find any autumn colours changing in the forests of maple leaf land up north .

I dusted off my only-been-used-once-before American passport and set off, going a little south to take the Springdale Hunters road before turning north because I had the day and I wanted to meander up the edges of Lake Roosevelt all the way from Hunters.A wrap around enamel blue sky blessed me. That is until I got to the Waneta border crossing where I tripped some kind of profiling alert in an officious little border control officer with unresolved power and control issues. His questions were relentless. Thinks: "Did you, sir, miss your calling and secretly want to be an important judge, and here you are a border control officer at little Wanita-In-The-Sticks north of Northport which headlines this week would have is the meth and heroin heaven of the the high country? Ag shame, as we would say in the old county. Ish. Here, in I believe the phrase is : "suck it up."

Then officious little BCO : "Take any cash you have and stand over there. I need to verify your statements." Interpret: take my amber liquid sunshine, needs a wash, many miles rez runner of a vehicle apart, examine every little bag, box, compartment and cubby, (tee hee and some of you know how much I like little cloth bags) sniff at every piece of sage, cedar or remnants of dried flower, shell or seed picked up in five years of road trips around the western USA and Canada.

No, I am not anal about tidying my truck, it is a temple of offerings to the gods of the road and oh! thank you officer for finding that piece of writing scrawled while driving, I was wondering where it went to...and no, it is not a cryptic code for anyone I am meeting to hand over merchandise to, yes you could call it poetry but I don't. I gave up being a poet a long time ago. Now I just capture words. Sometimes. I really do travel and write and take photos, with my knitting and Apple Laptop in my free time - such as I have when I am not panting library buildings and dressing up strangely to encourage kids to read.

Needless to say that almost hour long delay put a dampener on my spirits for a bit. I tired to shake it off but somehow I became host to a gnawing feeling in my gut that the blue book isn't going to make life any easier and somehow, somewhere petty tyrants and bureaucratic officials of the world are always going to find victims in those of us with African origins. Immigrant is such a dirty word at the borders to this great country.

It wasn't that he searched me and my vehicle, it was the tone and his attitude which was so humiliating: implying that he believed I was lying when answering in the negative to his questions about drugs and weapons and criminal history. And his growing, tangible, bristling, frustration and irritability when he couldn't find anything to pin on me. Last I knew wandering barefoot in the mountains lovin' the colours and light of autumn wasn't a crime. There's a whole tradition of road trip writing in this country, did you know, dear officious little BCO? Not all of us have the talent and self-destructiveness of Kerouac.I did find a great little library in Rossland with raucous storytellers outside: magnificent crows made in iron by Andrew Raney. While I was admiring the Storytellers an old timer called me over to the kerb where he was idling in a weathered Oldsmobile to tell me that "the building used to be a g'rage" and that he was 82, the wife had died a few weeks ago and he was building houses, in the construction trade. "But I have taken today off. Tomorrow I will work again" Me too, sir and I thank you for your time.
The sky was blue. Leaves were turning yellow and dancing gently to the ground.

I reentered USA at Paterson where the officer was a completely different kind of animal. Friendly. Loves his local library. Even knew the name of the person who serves him.This isn't New England or the East Coast. It is the Evergreen State, after all. But there were some glorious yellows in the landscape with little patches of Sumac brilliance every now and then. Sumac has become my favourite autumn find of the season this year. This unobtrusive little shrub with its feathery fronds of leaves manages to change every colour with a brilliant green, orange, yellows through to deep crimson and oxblood red all appearing on the same plant. Looking for Sumac evened up the scorecard. A little. That and the Storytellers.