Arches Road Trip

It still amazes me that I agreed to go on a road trip to a desert location in the summertime. I am notorious for not liking the heat or road trips: as a child, my parents dragged me all over the country visiting family and friends, packed into the back of a VW Vanagon (horrible) or Eurovan (slightly better), sometimes with young brothers, to exotic locations such as Iowa and Wisconsin. My favorite pastime on these trips was to check the road signs for the miles to our destination, and calculate in my head how many hours or minutes it would take to get to the next town at whatever speed we were currently driving. It was a small thrill to beat the calculation, and a crushing disappointment to run up against traffic or construction and arrive at the planned city a few minutes behind schedule.

Well, I find I still do the calculations, and it is still a bit of a thrill to beat your time, and also very easy to do so when Melissa Petersen is driving. My future roommate/home co-owner and I hit the road with our friend David Owen (aka the Biochemist) and headed to Arches National Park in Moab, Utah. We left Seattle on Friday night and drove straight through, stopping only for gas, snacks, and a brief perusal of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, arriving in Moab Saturday afternoon. We had a nice shady campsite next to a creek a couple of miles outside of town, made better by the provision of real bathrooms and showers (cold showers being a must when you have been hiking in hot weather).

After the first night, when we walked around Moab and took it easy, we developed a kind of rhythm: get up, eat/shower, hike (and thereby get sweaty and exhausted), go back to camp, collapse into the showers, go into town and hang at the internet cafe so David could get work done and Melissa and I could read or shop in air conditioning, head to the grocery store for food and figure out where to eat dinner and watch the sunset, then head back to camp for a fire and tea.

Our first hike was both the best and the worst: on Sunday we did Devil's Garden, the full 9 or 10 miles with the "primitive loop" and all the side trails. The pictures are incredible-the arches, the views from the top of the rocks we climbed up on-the entire park was amazing. However, being as it has been a long time since I did a 10 mile hike, and we were a mile high in the sky, and we started a bit later than we should have for such a long hike, I ended up with a combination of altitude sickness and/or heat exhaustion for the last mile or so. I don't think I had enough water, and I know my body was not happy that we were hiking in 100-degree heat, and my lungs started to rebel. We would climb up the trail for as far as I could go, and then stop in a bit of shade until I could breathe normally, and then start again. At one point, David actually left us in a shady spot and went on ahead to get more water from the trailhead, and Melissa slowly but surely kept me moving until we got back (David met us when we still had about a third of a mile left, and the water helped). I think Melissa started to get a little scared for me, especially when I said that I felt like throwing up (a definite bad sign) but she did a good job staying calm and keeping me going so I didn't just curl up under a rock and beg for Jesus to take me home. Although I did feel like that a couple of times. But we made it back, and I stuck my head under the water spigot for a good long time and then passed out in the car on the way back to camp. After a couple hours of rest, food, and shower, I felt a lot better.

After that little drama, we took it pretty easy for the rest of the day, hanging out at the internet cafe and then heading over to the Delicate Arch viewpoint for an attempt at viewing the sunset. We missed the sunset but shared a bottle of wine and ate salads and sandwiches. The next day we went for an easier hike through Morning Glory Canyon (traditionally but horribly called "Negro Bill Wilderness Area", someone needs to change that). We hiked for a long time but never saw the "bridge" we were supposed to see. We are not sure if we missed it or didn't go far enough or what, but we did lots of exploring, and climbed up a rockface. Melissa and I had teased David for bringing along a bunch of rope and climbing equipment that we were uncertain would actually be put to use, so he was pretty excited to break out the rope and help us climb up on the ledge and then back down. Not being a rope or rockclimber myself, I was a little nervous, but had fun tackling my fear and joining the fun. We hiked back through the creek for awhile, which was super fun but resulted in a lot of bug bites. However, I have discovered that I am most certainly a water creature and not a desert creature, because I had way more fun in the creek than in the sand!

We had been missing the sunsets but finally got a good one Monday night when we hiked Delicate Arch and then came down and found a spot on the side of the road to park and took the Coleman propane stove out to a rock and made grilled cheese sandwiches while watching the sun go down. It was probably not entirely legal to go off trail and use a coleman stove in the middle of nowhere and enjoy some Tecate while doing so, but it was incredible. Delicate Arch was an amazing site-hard to get to, what with my body's aversion to steep climbs, but so worth it. The funniest part was sitting up on the top, gazing out at the view for miles, and hearing my cell phone ring! Reception was fine, but it was a little windy, so I had to put off talking to my best friend Tenae, who was calling from Hawaii to schedule her brief time at home as she moves from Honolulu to North Carolina. But then as we were laughing about the cell reception and sending evil text messages of beautiful pictures designed to create envy in all of our friends, we discovered that all of our watches/phones had different times, so we had no idea what time it was and thought we might miss the sunset AGAIN. We practically ran down the trail and found that we really weren't as late as we thought we were and then went and found our spot for grilled cheese.

Tuesday morning we went on the guided hike through Fiery Furnace, which was actually a little slow even for me, what with all the stopping and talking about plants and such. But the guides were nice and there were funny fellow-hikers with us and we got done with plenty of time to go into town, get frozen yogurt/shakes/smoothies and then pack up the campsite and hit the road. We left at 1:30 Seattle time and got back around 7am Wednesday morning, a bit of a faster trip back, since we didn't stop and hang with the mormons.

I was so tired. And sore. And not even ready to do another trip like this anytime soon. But definitely glad that we went. We had a fabulous time with good conversations, and only one minor argument in the car about how to get back onto the interstate after getting turned around, in which, according to Melissa, David and I were stereotypical examples of classic male/female communication differences. I was giving verbal directions, he was thinking spatially, and um, I was right. I mean, he could have been right, but I preferred to go with the more certain route. Of course, I had also made the same mistake at the beginning of the trip about getting on a horribly marked onramp going the wrong direction, but I got us back on the freeway going the correct way in no time, without major argument about the spatial orientation of the road. Either way, we got back, and we now know that stopping for burgers means you will end up going the wrong direction on the freeway when you try to head out of town.

It was a great trip overall, and now I have to try to get all of my pictures loaded and labeled and categorized. But of course, I went right back to work, so I am busy and tired, and not too much is getting crossed off my to-do list. But that is okay-it's summer! Time to relax! Time to have fun while not being in charge!

This weekend I am headed to Portland with some friends and the band for shopping and a concert. More summer fun, but the temps will be in the nineties. I thought I had left those behind in Utah!

More photos on facebook

Unrequited

"All love is unrequited"

-Susan Ivanova, from the TV show Babylon 5 (yes, I realize I am a scifi geek)


Friday night at the retreat we had an interesting conversation about love and relationships, the nature of connection and the validity of unrequited love. It was definitely a stimulating conversation (and not one I expected to have with half a dozen guys and only one other girl). I also found it interesting that I had written the following passage just a couple of days prior in one of my daily writing times (I am trying to write a little something every day, like Anne Lamott recommends):

If you asked her why she loved Ethan, she would not have been able to tell you. She could list his pros and cons, the things she loved about him, the things that drove her mad. But to answer 'why do you love him?' she could only say, because I do. Love is something that cannot be reasoned-it simply is. While you may give up hope of it being requited, it will never leave you. Likewise, you can try to convince yourself to love a person because they seem to be everything you thought you wanted, but in the end, if your heart, your soul, does not beat wildly in anticipation of their very presence, you know that your admiration is not enough.

Of course, people will say this is merely romance, or worse, lust. They argue that love is a choice, a commitment. True, but still there is a mystery to real love, something that makes a person stay when their spouse has hurt them, makes a parent see a child through years of rebellion, makes a wife care for a husband dying of Alzheimers. That connection that brings the deepest part of you into communion with the other-that cannot be found on a pro and con worksheet.

This was the kind of love that Abby felt for Ethan. She knew she would always love him, despite the uncertain future of their relationship. There would always be a place in her heart reserved only for his smile, even decades in the future, perhaps after she had given the rest of her heart to someone else, someone who would love her back, with whom she would have children and would grow old with. Even then, when she sat in her rocking chair and looked at her grandchildren, she would remember the love that she felt for Ethan, and a bittersweet smile would steal its way onto her face. And when her granddaughter asked her what she was thinking of, she would pull her onto her lap, and say, "let me tell you a story, dear. A story about love."

This little section, while just a random bit of freewriting, will hopefully (in some form) be part of my grand novel someday. But for now I think it expresses some of my current perspective on relationships. We can talk for hours and days about what we look for in a significant other, perhaps the merits of a particular person, or what we believe is most important in a relationship. But in the end, we fall hard for people in spite of our logical, rational arguments for or against them. And while I am rather practical when it comes to the reality of how hard relationships can be, and that no matter how much you care for someone, sometimes it doesn't work out, I am still a romantic. I still hold to the mysterious nature of love and the beauty of the process. And I trust that someday I too will have beautiful stories to tell my grandkids.

Kerry Park

I wrote this on Monday morning, but life has been crazy and I haven't had time to actually post it, so here you are:

Last night I went to Kerry Park. I was happily exhausted after a long weekend at the Life Together retreat (more about that in a bit) but I had caught glimpses of Mt. Rainier (aka The Mountain) and I knew that with the sunset and the not-quite-full moon, it would be the perfect night to sit and gaze out at the beauty of Seattle. Kerry Park has always been one of my favorite places and views, and last night it did not disappoint. While there were more people around than I usually prefer, the view was spectacular: the sun glinting off the skyscrapers, the mountain in the distance, the hazy purple-blue sky. I only wish I had my camera.

I used to walk to Kerry Park when I was in college. I loved living on campus in Queen Anne- it is close to the heart of the city, with beautiful homes and tree-lined streets all around. Despite the busy life of Seattle being so close, I always felt peace when I went walking through the neighborhoods. Kerry Park is one my "thin places"-a Celtic term for places where we feel the closest to God. These are the places where it seems easiest for me to pray: a favorite quiet corner of campus, at the beach, and Kerry Park.

After this weekend, I think we can add Cascades Covenant Camp to the list. I was so glad that we scheduled quiet times into our retreat along with the worship, teaching, discussion, and play. I took a nice walk Saturday morning after breakfast and stopped a couple of times to journal, pray, and even sing a little (one of the best things about walking by yourself in the woods is singing to yourself. You can't do that on the bus or walking down the streets of downtown Seattle). It was refreshing mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

The whole weekend was really a breath of fresh air. After spending weeks and months planning and stressing over the weekend, it was such a relief and a blessing to have it go so well. Despite arriving late (and starting a couple of hours after our scheduled time) I was hit by such a feeling of joy and excitement when the cars started to arrive and my friends and fellow Questers started to scramble out. There were people I knew well and people I had barely met, and while I didn't become best friends with every single person (that would have been impossible) by the end of the weekend I had experienced amazing fellowship and participated in some incredible conversations.

Of course, when we came back, life went right back to busy, as I tried to squeeze in some Father's Day time with my dad before dashing off to catch the end of church and hang out with people on Linda's last Sunday at Quest (at least for awhile). I'm hoping to spend some more time journaling and reflecting on the retreat and the teaching from Dr. Spencer (look for more blog entries to follow). But I am glad that I took a few minutes, even in my tiredness, to sit at Kerry Park and watch the sun reflect off the city and appreciate the beauty of the mountain.