The Coast

We found sea lions out there. 

Check out this great sculpture the Earth did.

Yukon Gold

I went ten years 

with hardly ever having potatoes

in the pantry

there would sometimes be

fingerlings or little blue ones

or two idahos for a specific recipe

but the potato, the staple 

fell off the list.

Then I went broke

and the potato became a prominent

food source again

because five pounds costs a couple bucks

and Yukon Golds

are as good as cream.

Tobacco and Walking

So I stopped smoking again, after smoking for about 14 months or so. I haven't been smoking a ton, maybe 3-6 roll your owns every day. But I'm just too old for it now. I've spent all of my youth-capital on this issue. It's all gone. I have this feeling that if I keep smoking, even just a little, that my body will really start to get torn down by it. 14 months ago, I had been training on my road bike a lot and not smoking at all. Or I'd have a cigarette when drinking or something, but mostly I was on my bike for 150 miles or so every week. And then my ex-wife decided she didn't want to be married anymore, she told me by sleeping with my business partner, and that sent me into a deep depression with a couple of months of hard drinking and smoking.

So the hard drinking stopped over a year ago but the tobacco smoking hung on. Partially because I just really enjoy smoking tobacco and nobody was telling me not to, which was nice. But beyond the addictive part of it, the ritual really appeals to me. But then recently I caught a little bronchial thing that was going around, and my body just told me that I need to stop smoking tobacco. It was a clear message I received, sent by the stabbing yet dull pain I'd get when I coughed. It was like a crowbar was shoved down my throat and then wrenched in a way, like a lever, to push my throat towards the outside of my chest. It was that sort of pain. A very clear message. 

So I stopped smoking and some really great things happened. In about a week I wanted to walk all the time. Long walks, hikes, jogs, whatever. I think this happens to a lot of ex smokers. I have one ex-smoker friend who is so committed to his walking habit that when he finds great sticks on his walks he'll whittle them at home into what he calls walking sticks. He isn't eighty either, just a middle aged ex smoker. For me, the replacement is more about needing a time to do nothing but think, than it is about exercise. But I do walk fast on purpose, or jog and walk, and exercise does feel better of course when your lungs are clear all the way to the bottom. Smoking even a little doesn't help cardio fitness. But the big win in walking is all that day dreaming time. In the slowness, in the living in the moment, is where I can sort things out and be really intentional about what I want to do in a day, or a week, or a month. So the walks have become pretty special.

Also, I've gained five pounds in about ten minutes. That's been so great to put some more fat on my stomach. It probably had something to do with binge eating those ghetto fig bars they sell at Grocery Outlet for a dollar fifty. I'm guessing the combination of those, with the half party bag of potato chips, and a bunch of dips and bagel bites had something to do with it. I'm cooking that off though with the walking and the bike riding because I get disturbed by my own weight gain. So I'll be fine and will feel okay about myself soon, but for sure, when the smoking is gone, you just want to eat more. If you're going to stop smoking, stock the house with lots of fruits and veggies and no chips or ghetto fig bars that taste amazing. Those cheap ones taste so amazing. The doughy part of the cookie has a vanilla-marshmallow flavor quality to it, like marshmallow cream melting in plain (not chocolate) Ovaltine. It's amazing, I love them. I ate twenty in one day I think. I want the apple ones, and the blueberry ones too, and then make double-decker ghetto fruit filled cookies.

Apart from wanting to walk or jog and gaining weight, not a whole lot has changed. I've been having vivid dreams and I think that's connected somehow. But I don't read into dreams because I think they almost always mean nothing.

My Grandmother maintained her fitness by walking every day for decades. She was well into her eighties when she finally ratcheted it down from five miles every evening. After dinner she would just vanish for two hours. That seemed to really work for her. She'd harass me about being too skinny and I don't think she weighed over 90 pounds once in her entire life. It was as if she forgot we were related. We were a people built for hiking and yodeling, she actually came from the hiking and yodeling highlands of Germany.

So often, especially on warm and sunny days, I just want to walk for eight hours.

But I still plan on celebrating my eighties by pipe smoking tobacco in a corn cob, if I make it that far.    

You Can Have It

I'll take the quiet walks

the chiming bells of birdsong

the glitter of sun

falling through the trees

landing on me like the prayers 

of angelic guardians.

I'll take the deep breaths

the quiet pedals

the caress of the wind

the stroke of the brush

the bleeding of the pen

the holy moments

the blistering dreams.

You can have the race

the rats in the slaver's ships

the burning rancid night oils 

the creeping heavy dark

like ammonia over manure

the dull and sudden pig kills

the wild, sinking, wrinkling eyes

the snap under the weight 

of mortal decay.

You can have the race

I will take the quiet walks. 

Art Show

I was invited to hang art at Great Northern this month. It will be a first for me, which is really encouraging. I've always tinkered with visual art, have always loved making it and looking at art from others, but my lifestyle wasn't organized in a way that afforded me the time to invest in art making as much as I would have liked. Well that's changed now, and I learned a lot through this process and enjoyed making these images. I painted with watercolors, did some pyrography (wood burning) portraits, and drew with pens and charcoal. We'll have a closing reception at some point in February but I'm taking this mellow since it's my first time. 

Purpose

Tonight I felt a clear purpose

after I tucked my boys in bed

all three of us are looking forward to tomorrow

because we're going to hike

to the wild canyon

and go check out a cave

a deep Local fellow,

like Masonic ring-wearing deep

geo tagged for us

there are also mortars in the stone

and a waterfall 

without a name

Tonight I was called to wood burn a portrait

of Dolly Parton

So I got started on that

While drinking sake out of a bottle

after getting hyped on Yuban

This is as real as it gets

I am in love

Not with Dolly Parton

but with the process

Saturday

I decided

It was time to fire the gun

I drove up the mountain 

with the dog and the old wooden rifle

in the winter rain

The flags at the ammo store

were hung high and pulled taught

hung square and kept clean

I brought my girlfriend's boy

because he had never fired a gun

and I was going to teach him

because we would bond

and he would never forget it

We left with 200 bullets

and a brochure about forming

the State of Jefferson, our state

the freest State in the union

Don't tell anyone 

he was only supposed to sell me 100

but the policy is not for local boys

we get to buy 200 if we want

The boy and I drove up the mountain 

up where all the towns end

we drove down a dirt road

full of pond size puddles

the kind of road that makes you love your truck

We parked next to a swollen creek

and hiked in with the gun and the dog

and followed a wide mud trail into the woods

the rain kept falling laced with the heavy

super drops that form on pine branches

The boy put some holes in his first target

and treated the gun properly

just like I taught him back at the house

the dog got so agitated at the gunfire

she jumped up and bit the barrel

after I squeezed off a round

I had the safety on, but just barely

When a boy fires a gun for the first time

his face lights up with the realization

of the initiation, the snap, the kick

the brutal power and the pin point violence

an old wooden rifle delivers

We high-fived

because firing a gun well

in the pouring rain

matters

like starting a fire

like loving a beautiful woman

and her young son

well