We left the Oregon coast mid-October, just as the evenings were getting colder, with days of rain in the forecast. We took our time, mostly sticking to our 2-2-2 rule: drive no more than 2 hours each, arrive by 2 in the afternoon, and stay 2 nights. This way, we don’t get tired and cranky on the road, and it gives us time to move our bodies, and explore...
Read MoreWhere Parallel Lines Intersect
A story about my father, from 2001 Parallel lines are lines that never intersect. For infinity. Or maybe they intersect in infinity, I can’t remember. So I ask my father. “The definition of parallel lines must consider whether you are in a plane or in three dimensional space,” he says. My father’s answers are never simple. My father is a mathematician. He...
Read MoreThe Practice of Here and There
It’s that time again, when we are leaving one place and heading to another. We’ve been here in the safe, quiet, perfect temperatures of the central Oregon Coast since mid May, before the official summer season began. Besides losing Cody, it’s been a bit of a dream come true time for me. There’s no sales tax, I get fresh, wild, smoked salmon at the...
Read MoreRiver, Rocks, Repairs
Can you believe it’s already August? We’ve been here on the central Oregon coast since mid-May, our longest time in one place without volunteering. When I see the summer temperatures around the country, I can’t imagine being anywhere but here, where it averages 60° every day. Sometimes it’s sunny, sometimes foggy, sometimes gray and...
Read MoreRiding the Joy and the Grief
Before we even got to the coast, I was thinking about getting a bicycle so that I could ride around the area right from our spot. Marika and I used to be avid cyclers, sometimes riding fifty miles in a weekend. But my twenty year old bike had seen its best days, so I left it with the rangers at Fort Pulaksi two years ago. The only bicycle store in...
Read More