3514.
There hasn't been a post in the last week; more overtime at work, more personal drama (nothing catastrophic, but to the dysthymic, the phrase going through a patch takes on a certain dimension) and with the weather the way it's been this week, views of Wy'east have been few and far between.
Coming home from work along NE Sandy Boulevard east of 102nd Avenue the over-riding thing was the fog. It's That Time Of Year In Oregon, which, near the rivers, means a great deal of fog and a slightly-cutting chill. It was decidedly and deliciously gray and dark as I traveled along that old Portland road. I didn't expect to see any of the peak when I travelled south on Big 122 from Sandy, but as I cleared the Kmart and the Parkrose post office, there it was - big and semi-obscured in cloud that was rapidly coming in.
The time of day that I have usually means I'm seeing the peak in silhouette, so the real secret, I've found, is finding those moments of visual drama.
This mountain has been an obsession with me for most of my life, keeping watch on me even when I was a kid on the east side of Silverton, where this peak can be seen from the hilltop out on Steelhammer Road. In that adorable way we people think the universe is centered on us, I fancy a connection. Sometimes I feel as though the mountain arranges itself for me.
But it's a pretty fancy, and nothing more. However, if you're going to have a fancy, make it count.
I still can't help thinking of myself as George Orr, in a way, in The Lathe Of Heaven, where Ursula K. LeGuin uses appearances of Mount Hood like a slowly-tolling bell, a subtext which ties the whole book together and sets a kind of meta-cadence for the whole story, almost a spirit which watches over the whole changing universe and yet, keeps its own counsel.
It can hide behind the advancing clouds, but you know it's always there.
Always.
Coming home from work along NE Sandy Boulevard east of 102nd Avenue the over-riding thing was the fog. It's That Time Of Year In Oregon, which, near the rivers, means a great deal of fog and a slightly-cutting chill. It was decidedly and deliciously gray and dark as I traveled along that old Portland road. I didn't expect to see any of the peak when I travelled south on Big 122 from Sandy, but as I cleared the Kmart and the Parkrose post office, there it was - big and semi-obscured in cloud that was rapidly coming in.
The time of day that I have usually means I'm seeing the peak in silhouette, so the real secret, I've found, is finding those moments of visual drama.
This mountain has been an obsession with me for most of my life, keeping watch on me even when I was a kid on the east side of Silverton, where this peak can be seen from the hilltop out on Steelhammer Road. In that adorable way we people think the universe is centered on us, I fancy a connection. Sometimes I feel as though the mountain arranges itself for me.
But it's a pretty fancy, and nothing more. However, if you're going to have a fancy, make it count.
I still can't help thinking of myself as George Orr, in a way, in The Lathe Of Heaven, where Ursula K. LeGuin uses appearances of Mount Hood like a slowly-tolling bell, a subtext which ties the whole book together and sets a kind of meta-cadence for the whole story, almost a spirit which watches over the whole changing universe and yet, keeps its own counsel.
It can hide behind the advancing clouds, but you know it's always there.
Always.
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