note on leaving

Can you feel the night coming on?  Not till non did the dawn done dawn.  Gone words went and flew the coop, roofed the moon and floored the sky.  Clouds fly by, gas past sail-masts penciling the paveways.  Does anybody listen anyways?  This is a leaving kind of night, and tonight is dressed in fading colors, hammer on the guitar and snap snap snap the snare, because all I want to hear are songs and songs, “green grass and high tides forever”…

Now lets not say “itchy feet.”  Let’s not say “hit the road” or “open road” or “down the road.”  In fact let’s leave the road out of this.  The road’s been over-roasted, rewritten and rundown.  Rome mega-sized it, Dostoevsky criticized it, Whitman metaphysisized it and Cassady gave it sex appeal.  Lets forget the road altogether and just move on.  And by this I mean moving on to the moving on.  Why do you leave?  Well why do you stay?  Because you can?  Because it makes sense?  A pie piece of familiarity divided by the future...  Because it’s easy?  Cutting ties can be easy.  Leaving it broke if it’s already broke can be easy too.  If it ain’t easy it must be right, they say. 

Wonder if you ever had exactly what it is you need – but no, you have to miss it, to wish for it, to ache on it for seasons - only to have it, upon it’s arrival, disappear quick as it came… it’s the underlying sadness, or the underlying beauty of it all, whichever way you fancy.  If we really were born on our birthdays and gone on our death-beds then maybe time wouldn’t itch like burlap britches.  Has to be some part of me that connects with you beyond the moment.  (Guarantee you have a few gone faces with you right now, real as they ever were, and I bet you had that face before you were born too…)

fast times

the first training week is a officially over and everyone feels good after a week of early mornings and twelve hour days.  a professional video crew came out to the course this week, so hopefully in the near future we'll have a cool movie of the course to show off.  there wasn't time for much else besides work this week, but we did manage to lock ourselves out of our house one night, witness an awesome xyla-tie solo from an old man downtown who knew how to rock on another night, and discover the hoppin-est mexican restaurant this side of the mississippi.  also, we made some good friends this week that will most likely be our closest friends for the next 7 or 8 months.  now it's monday and things have suddenly slowed down, scattered storms and spring rain have replaced the sunny days, and today we have no agenda, other than maybe grocery shopping at a place called Ingles.  we might be working tomorrow, and we might be picking up some furniture today from a friend of ours in the middle of a move, he says he is trying to get back to that place in life where he can fit everything he owns into his truck, which works for us, now making the opposite transition.

if you have a day's worth

and a good word

and a night's rest

after keeping the company of your friends

and a woman

to greet the morning with

then you are blessed

you are blessed above all men

if you have a garden

or a houseplant

if there is an old man

who gets by

from the toil of your hands

cause you're the only one

who buys his floral prints

then you are blessed

you are blessed above all men

if you have a minute

to get it

its so simple

if you let it

cause we are blessed

lest we forget

we are blessed

we are blessed above all men

J Tillman - Above All Men

feeling deciduous

Yesterday we went on our first climbing trip in the Asheville area.  We drove about an hour southeast of the city into beautiful hill country along a winding river, and hiked into the biggest boulderfield I have ever seen.  The trees around here are so great, all the ash and oak and maple and magnolias... I think it's the diversity that gets me, definitely a change from the old evergreen forests of the NW; in our backyard we have a huge cherry blossom tree, a huger walnut tree, a row of firs and a bunch of others that I have no clue about.  Anyway speaking of trees, we were proud of ourselves while climbing because we set up a top rope anchor on a huge fallen tree, which took some ingenuity, and used our rope to climb a particularly giant boulder - this was at the end of the day, after we had already bouldered for a long time.  Well the rope took us forever to set up, and it was so funny because after we had been climbing for about 20 minutes, it suddenly started to rain for the first time since we set foot in Asheville.  It was so funny, we laughed and laughed about it.  

Anyway, I'm excited to get my climbing hands back and get better than Brad before long.  We have also been going on team jogs around the neighborhood, but before you get too healthy a picture of us, know we have eaten Arby's (dollar menu) three times in three days (it tastes the same here as it did in Portland).  Other than that we've been sitting on our porch a lot.  Oh and we also spend a lot of time getting corrected by the locals when we pronounce words wrong.  In other news, Navitat, the company we work for, has giant billboard adds scattered around town.  They show a picture of a squirrel wearing a harness and they say "Navitat Canopy Adventures" in big exciting yellow letters.  I don't know where they found a harness that small, but it's really pretty cute.

Roads Trip

Joel and I flew a plane to Denver where Frankenstein (Brad's Ford Explorer) was waiting, and Brad was there too, in flannel T-shirt and beard.  We did Denver to Arkansas in one day, and to the Buffalo River in NW Arkansas, where Ashley and Millie took care of us for two nights, and Kyle was there too.  Leaving Arkansas, the I-40 rolled us through Memphis Nashville Knoxville, and every skyline was a new excitement.  Tennessee was new territory for all of us, with her bluffs and her hills and her purple spring trees.  We camped and bon-fired in a state park, meeting our first new friends  that night, who taught us how to properly use "boonies" and "holler" in a sentence.  Joel practiced his new accent, and they all laughed in approval.  The next morning we finally showered, I found my first tick, and he was just a little guy.  After five road days, we were sitting on the streets of downtown Asheville eating buffalo wings.  Dylan, Abby, Evan and Cori met us for dinner that evening, and have taken care of us ever since.  The sun has also taken care of us: we've hardly seen a cloud since we've been here, and we all have one burnt forearm to remind us of our sweltering drive through Tennessee.

Now, after three days of being perpetually lost and confused, we have a home.  And not just any home, but a 50's style, 3 bedroom, half-brick home with more yard than we could need, more basement than we know what to do with, and a front door that boasts a perfectly centered doorknob (pictures now online thanks to joel).  We live in Weaverville, a small town about 20 minutes north of Asheville, and 10 minutes south of the worksite, a perfect compromise.  This morning we bought breakfast and feasted on our living room floor, laughing the whole time at the thought of it all.  We are still lost most of the time, we have no furniture, and no money, but those things will come easy as the summer goes.  We have no worries, only anticipation, because so far, every day has been better than the one before it.

We are incredibly lucky to be here in Asheville.  Like everything good in life, this opportunity was not earned, but has been given to us by a handful of friends and family that have been so incredibly generous as to help us out, and in myriad ways.  Work starts monday, and Garrison will be here in a couple weeks, and visitors will visit us throughout the summer, and everything will be fine, as soon as my poison-ivy rash goes away.