But this week was one of the worst yet. Day after day of unrelenting rainfall left me feeling like I might drown in the growing mud puddle surrounding my house.
So when the clouds parted Friday afternoon and I saw blue sky for the first time in many, many days, it was like feeling several pounds lighter. Spring will come as it always does.
The first blue day in a long, long time.
On Saturday, Libby and I went for a walk at Chetzemoka park in town, getting inspiration from a tiny daisy that was blooming in the middle of a soggy, grassy knoll. There, a tree has already begun to bloom, making me feel like the pressure is on to get the yard ready for spring planting.
A sunny spot. Blooming already?
On Sunday, I got out in the yard and began assessing our soil. Fallen leaves and tree debris has made for a nice mulchy layer to add nutrients to the soil.
Planter boxes we plan to fill with flowers.
Our winter blooming Hellebores bring a spot of color to the yard—a ray of sunshine to come home to on the days when cloud cover and early sunsets make the entire day seem dark.
Leafy, yellow and bright. New buds joining the blooms.
And signs of the coming spring are all around: I trimmed off last year’s seed pods from the peony tree, where new buds are forming. They look like clasped hands.
What color will the blooms be?
What’s exciting about our new home is we don’t fully know what is out in the garden yet. We know there are peonies, but don’t know what color. We see buds forming on the rhody, but aren’t sure when it will bloom. There’s a bare shrub that could (hopefully!) be a lilac. And shoots are springing from the dark earth that are likely the first stages of some irises and crocosmias.
Slowly, it will reveal itself to us and we hope to add even more color, with a plan to plant sunflowers, snapdragons, sweet peas, foxgloves, Queen Anne’s Lace, dahlias and much much more.
We have already planted a few daffodil bulbs around the yard. I keep looking at the spots where we planted them, imagining them waking up from their dormancy under there. Hopeful that they’ll grow, bloom and bring brightness and color. Waiting, waiting.
Three girls sat at a table making things happen. Making their coffee disappear from its cups. Making croissant flakes fall to the table top. Making men with bad intentions flee their presence. And making wishes for the women they know and don’t know.
Do the colorful eggs taste better? If you think they will, then they do.
What is the difference between intention and magic? How powerful are we, these three women, when we put our minds to something? Can we stop ourselves from getting sunburned if we just truly believe that you can’t get sunburned after 4 o’clock? Can we banish someone if we speak out at the right moment, say “stop” when we know it needs to stop? Can we heal someone by merely wishing them happiness from afar?
Maybe it’s magic. Maybe it’s Maybelline. Maybe it’s just bein’ a woman. Maybe it’s the way that summer feels on our skin. Maybe we are just in a weird mood because the moon is full.
I think it is magic. And here is how that magic works: Get some flour, some eggs, some water. Gather some fresh thyme from the garden like we’re little wood nymphs. Make a dough. Roll it out. Cut it, boil it, pour a sauce on it. Then eat the fruits of our labor—our little pasta children—that we created with our ingredients and our hands and our good intentions to nourish us and connect us and give us something to do on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
And it’s like every grandma in the history of grandmas has always said: when you put your love into making a dough, whether it’s pie, cookie, bread or pasta, the result will be delicious. If you put your friendship, your laughter, your disparaging comments about men who have wronged you, your hopes, your dreams, your desire to take down both capitalism and patriarchy (same thing?), your resiliency and your conversation into a pasta dough, it will make a decent dish of pasta and, most importantly, a really fun afternoon with friends.
Maybe men have been right all along. Maybe women, when together, are too powerful. But that’s fine. Because being powerful is fun, as is making pasta.
If we didn’t have winter, would we still feel that immeasurable joy on those first warm, spring days?
First signs of spring.
My job gives me the opportunity to meet and talk with a lot of people. Just last week, I met with a rambunctious crew restoring an old houseboat, talked with a sunny flower farmer, and had lunch with the leader of a local activist group.
Even though other aspects of my job have recently been causing me a lot of (unnecessary) stress, those meetings are what bring me the most joy. I fall in love with someone every day, because humans are interesting, hardworking, creative, smart, and beautiful.
And I feel that not only are these humans fulfilling their purpose by doing whatever it is that they’re doing, but they are also fulfilling their purpose purely by making my day.
Maybe that sounds self-centered. But then I think about how maybe to fulfill my purpose here on this Earth, all I need to do is connect with another human once or twice. Now and then, just have a nice conversation. Share a smile or a thought. Or even a split-second of eye contact. An understanding.
And I like that thought.
A girl and her flowers.
Or maybe my purpose in life is just to lie in the grass on a sunny spring day, soaking in the rays, quietly chatting with a good friend, and observing the early season flowers. I also like this thought.
Beauty is as nourishing as food.
This blog post is sponsored by a crazy amount of optimism and dreaminess.
These late night thoughts are sponsored by the colors of autumn
Here’s something I think about a lot: I’m 23 years old. If nothing crazy happens, I might live for another 70 years. What will those 70 years look like?
Smoke-filled skies? Aliens? Lifespans shortening? The rich getting even richer? The poor getting even poorer? The orcas living? Or dying? It’s hard not to imagine the worst. Especially when some things are the worst.
But then… last Sunday. I found the best. In the form of helpers. Tree-planters. Earth-carers.
Otherwise known as a group of Admiralty Audubon members. Some well over the age of 50, and still pulling Scotch broom out of the earth like it was no problem. Bending down, getting dirty, digging holes and planting roses, pines and firs. All so that my fellow young people and I can breathe a little easier in the next 70 years.
At Kah Tai park, which I accidentally spelled as “Quai Tai park” in the paper last week. To much ridicule.
I asked if I could take pictures for the paper.
“You working on a Sunday?” They asked. “Lucky for you, we’ve got an extra shovel!”
She knew it was highly toxic. She picked it up anyway.
“Come over here, get a picture of this Monterey Cypress, it’s going to be huge.”
“Look at this Amanita mushroom, isn’t it beautiful?”
…
A lot of shade gets thrown on baby boomers by my generation. Rightly so, in some respects (hello, housing crisis and 2008 financial recession).
However, I recently moved to the county with the oldest population in Washington State and I keep meeting helpers. Nearly every day, whether in the form of tree planters, green crab finders, creek restorers.
Over and over I also hear similar advice: there are people out there working hard, with new technology, new research, and new energy to help the earth. Instead of getting bogged down in nightmares about the Great Pacific Garbage patch, look at what’s happening.
And go plant a tree. They eat carbon dioxide for breakfast.
By now we’ve all heard of it: that abstract giant mass of garbage, three times the size of France that’s floating out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The Garbage Island, or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. We’re worried about it, collectively, especially when we think of all those cute otters and seals choking on straws and plastic bags.
But out here on the West Coast, especially up north, it’s hard to imagine that much garbage really being in the ocean. Not when the beaches are so beautifully picturesque… so empty and large.
There is one man who probably has no issues imagining all of the garbage floating out there in the ocean. John Anderson lives in Forks, Washington, and no he is not a vampire. He’s a beachcomber. Collecting things from the beach his whole life, little by little, finding messages in bottles, fossils, doll heads, Nikes, and thousands upon thousands of buoys, John has put all of his finds into a treasure-filled museum in his backyard just off the highway in Forks.
If you were to ask John, what is in the ocean exactly? He would probably answer: a little bit of everything. You never know what you might find.
Yellyfish, one of John’s artistic creations.
Pay the small $5 entry fee (cash only) for John’s museum and he welcomes you into a world of wonders. Look up and down, he says, and even though he’s a quiet person, he has stories to tell for each item.
Raggedy Ann doll heads from a 1970’s container spill.90’s Nikes from a container spill.Lighters, collected by John’s son.
John beachcombs on Pacific Northwest beaches, as well as occasionally taking trips south to the beaches of Texas and Florida. Everything in his museum has been found on the beach, and the variety of things, from whale bones, to mammoth teeth, to hard hats and medical supplies will surprise and captivate you. It’s like taking a dive into the truth of a capitalist world: too much stuff, lost at sea, forgotten forever… until found by John.
Remnants from the 2011 Fukushima tsunami.Don’t drop your phone in the water.Hard hats and signs. Some of the treasures he’s found have sentimental value.Sea beans… seeds from the Amazon Rain Forest that float up to the Texas coast.John in the background, with a tiki from 1940’s Hawaii.John in his earlier beach combing days.Trying to find the museum? Just look for the enormous buoy statue in John’s front yard.
Whether you’re worried about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or not, whether you use plastic straws or not… the next time you’re in Forks, skip the Twilight walking tour and check out John’s Beachcombing Museum. In my opinion, it’s a necessity.
John’s Beachcombing Museum
143 Andersonville Avenue, Forks, WA 98331
Open daily, 10am-5pm.
I got a coffee and sat down on the boat from Athens to Aegina while trying to make peace with its rockiness. That’s the problem with Adventure Lily. She has limits such as motion sickness and being bad at speaking different languages. Greek is especially hard as a language because when you’re looking at the letters you think you might know what the word is… but then you end up being totally wrong.
Stormy skies made for a sickening ferry rideMother of Aegina statue.
It was a bit stormy when I arrived at the Aeginitiko Archontiko hotel in Aegina, but the door was standing open anyway. The hotel owner, whose name I have since forgotten, pinched my cheeks and said I had a cute face, immediately taking on the role of a sort of Greek auntie. Later that evening, I went down the street to rent a scooter (the best decision I made during the whole trip). The scooter man asked me what hotel I was staying at and after the name came scrambled out of my mouth, he nodded and said, “Ah I know that lady… she talks too much.” But I liked her.
The Aeginitiko Archontiko hotel.
The next morning I climbed up the stairs of the hotel to the breakfast of my dreams in a sunlit indoor terrace. I think the hotel owner made the breakfast in the tiny kitchen that was also her office. She sat me at the corner table, next to stained windows that reflected splotches of color all over the walls, and squeezed some orange juice for me right then and there. Across from me was a buffet table with coffee brewing and a spread of homemade Greek delights. I tried my best to have a little of everything, knowing this was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
That included:
a piece of feta cheese and filo dough pastry
a piece of spinach and feta quiche
a slice of orange syrup cake
a slice of pear syrup cake
a plate layered with slices of ham and cheeses
a bowl of fresh fruit
another strawberry looking cake that I was too full to try.
Under each, a new pastry to try.
At the table just in front of me two Greek women–I think friends with the hotel owner–were listening intently as she listed the ingredients of the quiche, and the best way to make it. I only know this because I heard the word “feta” and “filo,” in the midst of the Greek. She paused in her instructions to give a loud and long “Kaliméraaaa” to a man who walked into the breakfast room. It had quickly become my favorite Greek word because I understood it and also because in France, I never got the sense that people said “bon matin,” in the same way that we in the States often say, “mornin’.” But the Greek “kaliméra” was said like a mom says “good morrrninggg” to her kid who has just gotten up after sleeping way past the allotted time for the greeting to work.
In the room next to the indoor terrace, a group of Brits sat at a round table underneath a painted ceiling, which was the hotel owner’s pride and joy. I listened to their conversation even though I couldn’t directly see them. They had stayed in the hotel before, and seemed to know the hotel owner… or at least they knew her food quite well. I pictured them as a group of British people from a Miss Marple mystery novel: eating eggs, sipping tea and gossiping about important people. Maybe wearing hats. I, the lone traveler with nothing better to do, was Miss Marple in this particular imaginary situation. (Although she would have been knitting.)
The painted ceiling in the breakfast room.
But since there was no actual mystery to solve, I left before their conversation was finished because I wanted to scoot all the way around the island. The scooter rental man had asked me if it was my first time to Aegina, if I knew the roads. I did not know the roads, I told him. “Well,” he said, shrugging. “You’ll figure it out. There’s not that many. Just go easy on the front break around corners.” I told him I had a lot of experience going hard on the front break and crashing. I have lived and learned when it comes to the front break.
My trusty scooter.
Alone and free, I made many wrong turns as I rode my way around the island in search of the Temple of Aphaea. It was my own personal pilgrimage and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such a feeling of satisfaction as I did when I took a wrong turn, stopped to turn around and noticed in the distance on the top of a hill the outline of columns rising up above the trees.
The temple is at the top of the hill if you squint.
The road was lined with flowers that smelled sweet and it was quite hot out, even though it was only March. Alone and without cell service, Adventure Lily was beginning to get tired of being a bit lost… but seeing the temple at the top of the hill renewed my energy.
The right road, once found, was a series of steep switchbacks around pistachio farms. (The pistachios are Aegina’s specialty. They are unlike any other pistachio I have ever had.) It would have been quite a walk for the Ancient Aeginetans to get to the temple. They worshiped Aphaea as a Goddess of fertility and the agricultural cycle. She was friends with Artemis and Athena.
Back in France it was cold and rainy. In Greece, the wildflowers had started to bloom.
Traveling in Greece off season meant that I was nearly alone at the temple. The bored lady at the pay station took my three euros and I walked around taking pictures and wondering what I would have been like if I had been an Ancient Greek.
Doric.The current temple was built in 500 BC.The view from the temple.
Sitting at the top of the hill enjoying the view of the island, I planned my next destination: a coffee in Perdika.
Why is it that whenever I’m in France, I’m suddenly like….. “qui suis-je?”
It’s happened before, I know this because I’ve documented it: I suddenly go from reading Cosmo to reading Literature with a Capital L, from writing haikus about eating donuts to thinking about the future of the novel and nonsense like that.
Is it the cafe culture of France, where one finds oneself sitting at those small tables day after day, smelling the cigarette smoke and thinking Deep Thoughts? Is it because I always happen to have loads of time on my hands whenever I am in France? Is there something in the water?
Or is it totally and completely due to the constant and easy access to tiny coffees and whimsical chocolates?
We loaded up on cute mussel shell, acorn and mushroom shaped chocolates because we just couldn’t resist.
While in Honfleur eating whimsical mussel shell shaped chocolates and drinking a tiny coffee, I discovered that I am not the only one whose personality is weirdly affected by the artistic culture of this country.
Honfleur is a mecca for the Impressionists (Gustave Courbet, Eugène Boudin, Claude Monet and Johan Jongkind, etc.). The tiny harbor lined with boats and tall wooden houses has inspired painters to portray it time and time again, not caring one bit that they are not the first to paint this recognizable stretch of space much like how I did not care that I wasn’t the first (and won’t be the last) college girl to post a picture of herself reading a book by Patti Smith on Instagram.
Anyway, because my family is my family, once we arrived in Honfleur (after a quick kebab lunch), we headed straight for the Erik Satie museum, taking just a few moments to pet a baby horse and walk through the oldest and largest wooden church in France.
What a cute lil dude!
Saint Catherine’s Church smelled deliciously like pine and had one of the most intricately detailed Nativity scenes I have ever seen. It was also guarded by a cute, tiny dog. Within twenty minutes, Honfleur had won me over with its small animals.
Saint Catherine’s guard.
Twenty creche pictures later, we were in the Satie museum, having the strangest time. In case you don’t know, Erik Satie was a musician and composer. He composed piano pieces that my mom, the pianist, qualified as “hard to play even though they sound easy.” (I became his fan after Lana Del Rey used one of his pieces at the end of the music video for Carmen.)
France, the queen of interactive museums, did not let us down. The Satie museum has everything: a giant winged pear, a large animatronic monkey, a white self-playing piano, and a whirly-gig pedal operated machine which museum visitors can take for a spin. All of the rooms come paired with Satie’s music and quotes from the man himself, talking about his very, very odd life.
The museum is creative, strange and perfect. I felt like I knew Satie personally by the time we walked back out onto the quaint streets of Honfleur.
I reflected on the oddball life of Erik Satie while looking at the beautiful Honfleur harbor with my family and came up with a short-term answer to the “qui suis-je” question. Maybe wherever I live, I am a different person who adapts to her surroundings. And maybe in France I happen to adapt to the artiste’s lifestyle. A bit weird, a bit creative, a bit existential. Maybe that’s just the French way.
Discussing Satie and impressionists, and drinking the largest coffees we could get our hands on.
If you were to ask John, what is in the ocean exactly? He would probably answer: a little bit of everything. You never know what you might find.
Lily Haight 