8 p.m. on an rare night drive into Upper Smith River. The pickup and I crunched into the gravel pullout at the brink of our descent to the Johnny Gunter place. Newborn Moon rocked backward toward a soft landing on the southwestern ridge. Orion stood tall, watching over her passage. Ursa Major pointed toward the North Star, who exhaled a breeze that traced its way south across my face, cold but not biting. This is the place where each fallen raindrop decides whether to descend into Hardscrabble or Ellenburg Creeks and southward into the Umpqua River, or trickle northwest into Smith River and my ancestral watershed. For now, the pullout remains the last digital contact before I drop mercifully out of service. But a new fiber optic cable is currently being installed in Upper Smith River, and my future will soon be riddled with decisions about whether or not to connect. I’m uncertain whether this “serves” me.
I thumb-typed a few emails, trying to recoup a little of a day disrupted by errands and the dullness of sleep deprivation (One of our cats had gone uncharacteristically missing for most of the night, but he turned out to be missing only on his terms. Reminds me of me.) Then the pickup and I rolled downward into the canyon, headlights swooping through dark corners like a wide-eyed forest owl on the hunt. My brain began to coast. The miles vanished without conscious awareness, engulfed in a sea of darkness sweeping in from behind and no longer parted by light. A few miles further, and even the stars had vanished behind laminar clouds running ahead of the next rainstorm. There was only that black sloshing ocean of Time, with me navigating my little boat toward a small broken house and a warm woodstove. Beyond this, the future seemed vast and unknowable.
Uncertain or not, my quiet winter is being replaced by an immediate future now pleasantly cluttered with some calendared events. All of them are free and open to the public. Some even come with snacks and drinks. I like it!
March 3, 2024, 3-5 p.m. I’ll be reading my essay “Windthrow,” which was selected to be part of the Winter Writers Series “On This Land 2024,” created by the McKenzie River Trust and hosted by Tsunami Books in Eugene, Oregon. McKenzie River Trust is one of my favorite conservation organizations, committed to restoring lands in my home watershed and many other places.
March 10, 2024. 3-5 p.m. Come to Tsunami Books in Eugene to celebrate the release of “Bookstore Clerks and Significant Others” from Tsunami Press. Don Latarski will bring his guitar and accompany me in a spoken word version of “On the Lam,” an essay published in this collection (I am a significant other). There’ll be drinks, snacks, and a cake from the locally renowned Sweet Life Bakery. If you can’t make it on Sunday, consider coming on Saturday, March 9 from 5-7 p.m. for the first installment of this release party and a different set of readers.
March 21, 2024, 7-9 p.m. I’ll be the featured reader for The Salem Poetry Project at the Bush Barn Annex, 600 Mission St. SE, Salem. I am tripping over myself in anticipation of their “infamous” open mic! In fact, I might prefer infamy over being the featured reader. In any event, it should be a great party!
My collaboration with friend and guitarist Don Latarski continues. We have a series of video tracks recorded at the Connecting from the Heart website, or catch the Youtube version here. Our most recent upload is “Starstruck.” Don engineered the sound, and Ryan Zimmer is the video guru. Connecting from the Heart is the brainchild of Laura Dubois, who founded the project to provide connection and respite for people suffering from isolation during the pandemic. But guess what? People are still suffering. So Laura perseveres with grants, donations, and a beautiful audio space at Unity of the Valley in Eugene.
The immediacy of the narrator's sense and love of place is luminous. Thank you, Tom. This is about home. What we can never "possess," but where we can be present, witnessing, and grateful. Your writing in all of its facets reminds me of the gift of this attentiveness.
Oh yes, the access to the 'modern' world...such a conundrum.
Our property in NE Oregon has little to no internet/cell phone access. I Love that. On the other hand, if we had the fiber optic then we Could actually live there, i.e. I could WORK from there... but would that more curse than blessing? (it's destroyed me once before...not able to enjoy a place/property I loved because I was working all the time to pay the bills...).
"The miles vanished without conscious awareness, engulfed in a sea of darkness sweeping in from behind and no longer parted by light"
".. only that black sloshing ocean of Time, with me navigating my little boat toward a small broken house and a warm woodstove. Beyond this, the future seemed vast and unknowable."
I love this drawing into the moment, which is all we have, the future always vas and unknowable, and sometimes the past is too....