L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

How the Web Saved the Day

What did we ever do without the Interwebs? A promise of fine autumn weather and a very rare unprogrammed Sunday drew us out of the bat cave. We settled on a drive to Mount Rainier National Park and a hike along the Naches Peak Loop Trail - about four miles of surprisingly level walking with spectacular views of the mountain. However, a quick web check for Washington State travel alerts turned up a mudslide which had just buried SR 410 - DOT en route! - just 10 miles from the park. A disappointment to be sure, but nothing compared to the inconvenience of driving eighty miles first. (To say nothing of the inconvenience to the people whose homes were destroyed by the mud slide.)

Back to the web to draw on the collective wisdom of Facebook. Lot’s of great suggestions within minutes. We settled on the Washington Arboretum. A place not 20 minutes drive from home that we NEVER go to. (Well once. Twelve years ago. We drive through it on occasion on the way to Nishino - the best sushi.) A few clicks later we had an arboretum trail map in our hands and off we went.

Was the arboretum a satisfactory substitute for the majesty of Rainier? Well, no, but it definitely wasn’t a wasted day. I don’t have time to write twelve thousand words. The sun is still shining.

See more like that one:

• The Horse Summoner
• Live and Let Hive?
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• Hand me that Dutchman

South and East

Let the drinking begin.

Last week it was a visit with my in-laws in Southern California, this week it’s a visit with my own family - parents, two sisters and their families - in Cashiers, North Carolina (apparently pronounced “CASHers by the locals). It hasn’t gotten off to a bad start. Last night found me ensconced cozily in a big overstuffed chair by a roaring fire watching snow falling through trees overlooking Lake Glenville. With a glass of wine in hand. It just doesn’t get a whole lot better than that. Except maybe morning finding me back in the same chair watching the sun rise into blue sky over sparkling water with coffee in hand.

The house is easily large enough to absorb all eleven of us as long as you don’t need uninterrupted access to a bathroom and the larders are crammed with every sort of edible and potable.

Once again, the sun is bright and I’m sunglassless - maintaining an unbroken record of never remembering to bring them along. It’s becoming an obsession. I’m taking pictures, but predictably do not have a cable to download them from the camera. In the mean time, here’s a link with some pictures of where we’re staying.

I predict a difficult transition back to real life, but let’s not think of that now. I’d rather think about lunch.

See more like that one:

• Patchwork
• Disappearing/Reappearing Airport
• It's Like a Fish. But It's Not a Fish.
• Murder Most Foul
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Patchwork

Families are pieced together in different ways, some harmonious, some in vivid contrast. Often the seams are strained to breaking, but hopefully the stitches hold fast.

I’ve been fortunate, both in my own family and in the family I married into. We may not see them often, but when we do it’s good, though with far, far, far too many tortilla chips. We were down in California last week to celebrate my mother-in-law’s 80th birthday and continue doing our part to keep America’s corn growers afloat in this troubled economy. I hope I’m half as sharp and witty when I’m 80 as she is. Happy birthday, Kathi!

Like many modern families, I don’t have just one mother-in-law, but two. We took a day to drive up the coast from Oxnard to charming San Luis Obispo to see MIL#2. In the past, we’ve mostly visited in the summer and I’ve always had a soft spot for the way coastal California looks then: rolling hillsides swathed in pale gold grass, dotted with dusty green live oaks. In March Hwy 101 weaves between rolling blue ocean and green, green and more green. The miles swept by and before we knew it we were sailing past the ever-expanding kitchiness of  Madonna Inn and off the freeway into town.

MIL#2, Barbara, is a quilter. Though that’s a little like saying Eric Clapton plays guitar. One never need worry about tripping and falling in her house - you’re sure to land on something soft. Her work is meticulous, creative, beautiful and prolific. And at 79, it’s keeping her young and as vibrant as her quilts. She’s just completed a project that’s kept her busy for years: Making wedding quilts for all her grandchildren. None of the grandkids is close to matrimony yet. But my boys got to see their quilts.

Years ago my father-in-law advised me to make plans for the future. It’s not critical to follow the plan, he said. Just having it gives a shape to the future and makes your place in it seem real and solid. That advice led to a couple of poor real estate investments, but no regrets. These quilts did the same thing. Suddenly, a vague and amorphous future had wives and homes and quilts in it. Colorful threads sew scattered pieces of family into something that will do to keep you warm. Quite nicely.

See more like that one:

• South and East
• Disappearing/Reappearing Airport
• It's Like a Fish. But It's Not a Fish.
• Murder Most Foul
• Rolling Downhill

Snarkfree Sailing

I’ve been trying to think of the wry angle on this, but I don’t think it’s susceptible to snark. This was just one of those bucket list experiences you want to soak up and remember for the rest of your life. I’ll save the snark for something else and let the pictures do most of the talking.

We flew down to southern California to celebrate my mother-in-law’s 80th birthday at my sister-in-law’s beach house. By chance, a friend, Steven Van Hook, lives an easy kayak paddle up the marina from where were staying and he volunteered to take us sailing. Twice!

I’ve never been on a sailboat in my life, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. One thing I found out was that sails are more like wings than parachutes. I also found out that Bonine works for me, thank god!

Conditions were perfect with light winds, calm waters and brilliant sunshine. Our boat “Imagine” is 33-feet long and very pretty. We got the basic “five H’s” spiel from Skipper Steve (hands, head, heeling, help and, of course, hurling) and then motored out of Channel Islands Harbor and set sail towards the islands. (And now the phrase “set sail” actually means something to me. So does “taking a different tack.” Who knew?)

Early on we saw a whale spout in the distance but never got close enough to see more than spume. Then magic happened. We came across a huge pod of dolphins. They swam with us, cavorting with the boat, leaping out of the water. I could even hear them sounding under water - something I hadn’t expected. I got dolphin snot on my sunglasses. After a while they swam off, but we caught up with them again on the way back and this time they stayed with us much longer.

I could have stayed out there all day, but the boys were starting to turn a little green so we turned toward harbor. Steve let me have a turn at the wheel, which was a blast. I was completely surprised at how sensitive the steering is.

Final surprise of the day: I’d only been standing on a small boat all afternoon, but I could hardly keep my head up through dinner.

Thank you, Cap’n Hook!

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

See more like that one:

• South and East
• Patchwork
• South and West
• Trading cactus for coffee
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South and West

On the road again. I could try to make a full blog devoted to whining about air travel but it would get tiresome. We flew Southwest Airlines, which is somewhat famous for its humorous flight attendant announcements. We were treated to a hysterical one several years ago that included the information that the smoking section was out on the wing where they were showing the movie “Gone With the Wind.” Sadly, neither leg of our flight yesterday featured stand-up comedy, but we did get free peanuts (Peanuts! Are they mad?) and sodas. Don’t get me started on rental car agencies, though!

More

Looking back at my posts of the last few days, I just have to say that I think “My Favorite Nipple” and “Fugitive Pubes” would be awesome band names.

See more like that one:

• South and East
• Patchwork
• Snarkfree Sailing
• Trading cactus for coffee
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Trading cactus for coffee

I’m heading home and feeling lucky so far. I needed to be at the Phoenix airport right about the time the nearly victorious Arizona Cardinals were due in from Tampa.

I was in Atlanta the year the nearly victorious Braves went from “worst to first.” The entire city was insane. Even smallish businesses were buying full-sized freeway billboards just to congratulate the home team. My personal favorite, on I-85 was “Chop Chop Tomahawk! Shallowford Vasectomy Clinic.” Their near victory homecoming was a scene of unbridled, hysterical pandemonium. I can’t imagine what would have happened had they, oh say, won.

So I was a bit concerned about what I might find at the airport today. But if there are unbridled, hysterical Cards fans here, I haven’t seen them. It’s quiet here in Terminal 4. Maybe it’s a good omen.

It’s been a whirlwind tour of excitement. I was finally able to cross Downtown Tempe off my bucket list. The Heard Museum in Phoenix is well worth an afternoon and Scottsdale has more high-priced art galleries than Cards fans.

It’s not an unpleasant way to pass a few hours. Especially if you like cowboy art. Being spoiled by the parental units for a few days has been enjoyable and relaxing. They’re just too cute. I won the great parents Superbowl. But I don’t think there will be a huge crowd waiting at Seatac either.

Fans these days. I tell you.

See more like that one:

• South and East
• Patchwork
• Snarkfree Sailing
• South and West
• The Natives are Restless

The Natives are Restless

My parents have lived the gypsy life for some dozen or so years, perpetually roaming North America in their ginormous RV, Roadzilla. There’s not a museum or roadside attraction they have not seen. Then Arizona lured them to put down a tentative root. They now have a “park model” in Mesa, Arizona. A park model is like a RV with no wheels. I guess they call it that because it’s “parked.” They’ve been nudging me to come visit for at least 50 years, so here I am.

Their park model, which is actually airy and comfortable, is plunked down in an RV park, but I use the term “park” figuratively, since any park-like features are sealed safely under a solid sheet of concrete. It’s a daunting sight: 2000 lots in a tight grid crammed with RVs (parked and otherwise), retirees and kitch. It reminds me a little of that scene at the end of the Indiana Jones movie where they hide the Ark of the Covenant in that hugewarehouse. You could lose an RV here forever. Every single lot has a grapefruit tree and the grapefruits are excellent. There is no dearth of activity: Tennis, bocce, cards, gym, computer lab, lapidary shop, wood shop, metal shop, pools, poker, silversmithy, tap dance, square dance, jazz dance, belly dance, painting, stamping, scrapbooking, bunco, live music (Tony Orlando without Dawn next week)… You could stupefy yourself with recreation.

I’ve met all the Jews (six including my folks). Of the rest, about half are Canadian snowbirds and all are busy, chipper and sociable.

Twelve years on the road does something to a person. Driving becomes a recreation in itself. So we’ve been doing a lot of it. When I told a friend I was off to see the sights, he snarkily questioned the existence of sights in Arizona. Big talk from someone in Florida. The last time I was in Florida I had to pretend freeway overpasses were hills to keep from becoming disoriented by the relentless flatness.

Back in Arizona, we spent eight hours on the road doing the full Apache Trail scenic loop. The last hour was a challenge to maintaining consciousness, but overall it was a hellava day. The first stop was Goldfield Ghost Town, a tourist attraction on the site of an old gold mine. If there were any ghosts, they’ve been scared off by the earnest moseying of colorful old west character types and wall-to-wall bluegrass bands. The last stop was a steep and beautiful hike to the fascinating ruins of ancient cliff-dwelling natives.

Saguaro rustling is a major crime in Arizona. The tall iconic saguaro cactus is so popular here, there is a government program to microchip them so they can track down cactus thieves and bring them to justice. A couple factoids for your next trivia night: Saguaro are slow growers. They are usually about 80 years old before they begin to grow their first branches. If you’re thinking of rustling a few for your patio, be sure to mark which way they were facing in the wild. They are directional and will pine away if you plant them facing the wrong way.

The desert is a clever place with no quarter for mistaken strategies. There’s a stark and terrible beauty here that’s impossible to deny. The bones of the earth are bared to the sky and every shred of living matter is exquisitely adapted to its niche in a scrappy, intricate web of survival. I am repelled and fascinated by the suspended arid stillness of the desert. Color is rare and fleeting. There are not enough resources to waste on something so profligate as vividness. But there are a million subtle beauties if you look very close.

It’s only the humans that are profligate in their busy scurrying and brilliant hues.

See more like that one:

• South and East
• Patchwork
• Snarkfree Sailing
• South and West
• Trading cactus for coffee

Flying to Phoenix

I am not a frequent flyer. Maybe a few times a year. The gaps are just long enough that each flight brings fresh humiliation and deprivation but not quite long enough that the memories of previous humiliations and deprivations have faded.

Think about your life right now. Whatever aches, pains, irritations plague you now, in ten years you will long for these days. In a way it’s a comfort. If my future self thinks things were pretty good ten years ago, who am I to say she’s wrong?

It’s the same way with air travel only it happens a lot faster.

This time I managed to dress metal-free, having experienced the public full body search that follows the criminal negligence of wearing a barrette. But I should know by now that no matter how prepared I am, the airlines are ever vigilant for new ways to challenge their enemies. I mean, customers.

US Air has ceased all complimentary services. All of them. Well, not all. You still get a seat, a seat belt, reasonable quantities of air and nine square inches of space in the overhead bin. But should you want a Coke? Two bucks. That flimsy Styrofoam thimble of brown swill that passes for coffee? Peel off another dollar. They’re charging for water. Water. You thought you missed those tiny bags of peanuts? Just wait. There will be a credit card slot on the lavatory door next time. Mark my words.

Just for the record, I do know that these are relatively minor things compared to the near miraculous feat of whisking people safely from place to place. And even landing them safely on bodies of water in dire emergencies. In 1976 I spent a summer in the Soviet Union. I survived domestic Aeroflot flights where the fight attendants had to use their fists to hammer the sagging bulkheads back into place, where cabin compression occurred in a single, ear-stabbing burst, and passengers loudly and openly prayed on take off and landing.

The flight from Seattle to Phoenix was an uneventful 2 hours 45 minutes. It’s a testament to my overall faith in the safety of air travel that I can afford myself the pleasures of snark.

One thing I’ve discovered about traveling from Seattle: You collect sunglasses.

It NEVER EVER occurs to me that the sun is shining somewhere else until I get there and squint, mole-like at the scary bright sky monster. So, every landing involves a hasty stop at a drug store to buy cheap shades. I have dozens of them. Now I have dozens+1.

Fresh from the compressed darkness of a Seattle winter, Arizona sunshine pulls your body outward in all directions. It feels so vastly open you almost fear you’ll fall off the ground and spin helplessly into the sky. I have managed to keep my footing on the earth. But only just.

See more like that one:

• South and East
• Patchwork
• Snarkfree Sailing
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Flying to Dreamland

By the time I get to Phoenix I’ll be irritated at US Air, but more about that later.

I had a vivid dream the night before. I rarely remember more than snippets of my dreams – and what I do remember is typical dreamcrap not worth wasting brain cells on. But every now and a vivid one hits and stays with me in great detail. Permanently. The earliest vivid dream I can recall I must have been not much more than two years old. My grandmother was dying of cancer and spent most of her final days sleeping on a daybed in the front room. In my dream I saw her there in the dim light and was unhappy because my mother was unhappy. But then I heard a voice from the fireplace telling me it was all OK. And then candy came down the chimney. Hey, I was two.

I’m still trying to figure out last night’s dream. Maybe you can help. I don’t subscribe to the belief that certain things in dreams always symbolize specific waking life things. But I do believe there are some common themes and vivid dreams can guide your thinking and inspire new insights.

In this dream, I suddenly and unexpectedly gave birth to a beautiful daughter. She was lovely and pale with dark-lashed blue eyes and I adored her instantly, despite being entirely unprepared for her arrival. Everything about her was fabulous. Even her shit was special.

The scene shifts and I’m sitting on the floor while she sleeps in my arms. In front of me, my 22-year-old son, Alan and a friend of his are sitting by a pillar covered with paper and playing a strange game involving taking turns drawing kanji characters on the paper. It’s some sort of strategy game and they are having a great time challenging each other with clever plays, but I have no idea what the characters mean or what any of the rules are. Also, the characters are not really kanji, but squares with Mondrianesque hashings of geometric lines inside. They are dream kanji.

After ten or so moves, Alan hands me the pen and says, “Here mom, you take a turn.”

I have no idea at all what the game is about, but suddenly I know what the next move is and draw it on the paper in a few quick strokes. Somehow, I know it was not a brilliant move in the game but it was a legal move and will serve. Alan is impressed.

Then the alarm goes off and it’s time to fly to Pheonix. I swim to wakefulness, push the covers aside and swing my reluctant feet to the floor.

Anyone care to put on their Dream Interpreter boots and have a go? Please don’t be literal. I absolutely do NOT crave another actual child.

Hand me that Dutchman

There’s a scene near the beginning of Shogun, where Dutchmen are boiled alive. I have increased sympathy for them today, not that I delighted in their suffering when I first read the novel.

We have decamped to Lummi Island, a lovely wooded little island within sight of Canada, for three days of intensive editing of our own novel. The cabin is secluded, tucked into a cedary hillside with a view of Puget Sound. It’s one of those cabins that’s all knotty pine and antlers, heated by a big pot-belly stove and decorated with ducks. The kitchen window frames Mt. Baker with an assortment of silly glass pendants. We’re cooking on a 1919 gas range and boiling water for tea in a pot over a gas flame of all things. I’ve landed in Grizzly Adams estates. With wifi, thank you very much. (Chris, if you’re reading this, you and V have got to come stay here. It’s so you.)

Lummi Island is the most northeasterly of the San Juan archipelago. Located near Bellingham, it is served by a small ferry which makes the crossing in six minutes. Right now the car ferry is in dry dock, so we went by boat, dragging our suitcases and ice chest. The island is wooded, rural and has no RV parks, campsites or state parks. There are a total of 18 miles of quiet roads. It’s what you call a getaway with a great deal of away in the mix.

The local natives, the Lummi Nation, did not originally call themselves that. When the Spaniards first arrived and saw the locals’ bonfires, they gave it the name “Luminara” which the Lummi later adopted. (And here I thought they used ‘lectricity for lummi-nation. Ar ar. I just kill myself.)

But back to simmering Dutchmen.

One of the highlights of our little abode is a home-made outdoor hot tub. It’s a Japanese-style wooden cylinder lined with blue plastic. A wood stove sits along one side, immersed in the water. It’s very effective, although there are certain differences between this and the hot tub we enjoyed on our last vacation. For one thing, we have to stoke it. After several pounds of damp newspaper and twenty-nine matches, I felt like Jack-Freaking-London in the Yukon, but we finally got it lit. Then, it takes several hours to heat. And, since there are no whirlpool jets, you stir up the water with a boat oar. It feels very much like tending a big soup pot and I hollered to Mike to send up the first victim.

Temperature control turns out to be something of an art - an art we have not mastered. We’d built the damn fire, tended it for three hours and goddammit, we were going to sit in the water if it killed us. Which it damn near did. After the first abortive attempt to force a toe in, I ran cold water into the steam, stirred it up, damped the fire, waited. But still. Fuck. That was some seriously hot water. I’ve been out for an hour and I’m still pink. I hope my skin stays on.

See more like that one:

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• Murder Most Foul
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