The Rainy Season

The day before yesterday it was 30 degrees and today the first fall/winter storm has come in with slightly warmer temperatures. Tonight I drove back from Portland (about 2 hours) in the dark and wet. This weather is such a common staple in the Northwest. It is refreshing and the hardened and cracked topsoil will suck up the rain- closing those surface gaps. This is the rainy season, maybe not as dramatic as SE Asia or India, but just as persistent. For many of us it is good to feel this familiar change and for people new to the region they get surprised that this gray and wet can go on (not everyday) and on and on.

I've discovered two new words: bricolage and bricouler. I like the definitions that are in Wikipedia: "the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things which happen to be available, or a work created by such a process. The term is borrowed from the French word bricolage, from the verb bricoler – the core meaning in French being, "fiddle, tinker" and, by extension, "make creative and resourceful use of whatever materials are to hand (regardless of their original purpose)"; in contemporary French the word is the equivalent of the English do it yourself, and seen on large shed retail outlets all over France. A person who engages in bricolage is a bricoleur." This seems to be an aspect of which I'm quite versed. The counterpoint to this is the linear engineer... something which I need more development.

Nature is a bit of both I think. It is something about how it all seems to fit together like a coherent puzzle. There is a structure to it but there is also a construction of whatever appears. The blackberries and English Ivy are invasive species and creep into any piece of sunlight they can find. They have intruded upon the native plants. Yet there is a coherence with their presence. As we clear out the blackberries there is an increased amount of space and openness. This is something that we want but for the small songbirds, it may mean a loss of protective habitat. By clearing out the berry thicket we create more open space for the deer to wander through, but do we create an unsafe environment where the Cottontail Rabbits are easy prey for the bobcats?

Some might say that I spend too much time thinking about these things- I think that people spend too little time thinking about the consequences of their choices and subsequent actions. As we constantly act from our self-centered needs, what are the consequences of our actions? The main thing that distinguished us from animals with less developed brains is our ability to reflect more fully and respond thoughtfully and act judiciously.

Tonight I gave a talk at the Northwest Coaches Association meeting in Portland (2 hours from here). It is a perfect venue for selling and marketing my coaching and training services. However, I was more interested in talking about my life experience and just being who I am in life. At this point of middle age (I'll be 54 this weekend) I'm tired of trying to be things other than who I am or trying to perform the way that a public presenter "should" be. It is so much effort. There is a quote from William James that comes to mind:

"I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible, loving, human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of pride."

I find that I am more interested in photographing the small things- the patterns up close rather than the big landscapes. I've come to the end of many weekends being occupied and a week in California to help some people build a retreat cabin. On my way there I wrote the following in my journal while parked at Scott Mountain Summit in the Siskiyous:
"...snow thinly covers pine and cedar. the redness and gray manzanita etch lines in the forest. a jay calls and there is the persistent mid-tone background of wind accompanying the stillness and the percussive beat of water droplets striking stone and needles. the Pacific Crest Trail is a quilt of orange pine needles and s sugar coating of snow.
"... I see and think of the writing and how I experience the snow through the lens of Gore Vidal talking to me from his book (on CD in the truck), Point to Point Navigation. His words, viewpoint, become the filter, it becomes the dictionary and grammar text from which these words flow onto paper. Just as he states how life is forever shaped by cinema... that people live life based on the images of cinema. I enter into the Trinity drainage, to a place where direct experience of the moment is deified and enthroned. It is the experience of warmth, smell, sounds, and images based on my years and years of experience driving over this summit. It is not just the experience of this present moment. It is tempered by my feeling for wilderness; sculpted and edited by my world of wilderness. The PCT summons from the dead my relationship with Bellingham Billy and the many experiences with first snowfall. The sounds of my boots crunching and the sight of my boot imprints are filtered through my emotions about past adventures. This is not like a child's first experience of snow but through the experiences of a lifetime..."

I'm back, it is late. May your journeys be fruitful.