Blog gone weird

Apparently, the new blogger interface has caused my blog to freak out. Hopefully, I'll get it back to looking normal soon.

Update: Yesterday, my blog looked like some kind of odd, abstract painting, with blocks of texts and images lying on top of each other, and most of the text unreadable. I have to admit that it kind of freaked me out to see my blog in pieces, like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz ripped to shreds by flying monkeys. I sent panicky text messages to Scrivener, who logged on and used his mad computer skills to rescue the header that Dr. MMMmmmm designed for me six years ago.

Now that I'm used to it, the new blogger interface is fairly easy to use, so I've been playing around with the new blogger templates. If the colours and shapes keep changing, it's not your imagination. Feel free to chime in with your opinion on what the blog should look like.

Mossy

When we hiked through a rainforest in the Pacific Northwest, I couldn’t help but admire the mosses. Soft green covered every stump, every broken branch. The fantastic shapes of the forest made me feel like I was in a science fiction novel.

Old mountain inn

After a week of eating mostly hiking food — sandwiches, fruit, anything that could be easily carried — we decided one night to find a restaurant. A teenage girl at the bunkhouse gave us directions to an old inn built close to the winding mountain road.

The wooden-paneled dining room was filled with warm light. The waitress brought us a fresh loaf of homemade bread, which we began devouring even before we ordered our meals. The smell of spaghetti sauce and seafood wafted over from the other tables.

I looked around the room and spoke quietly to my husband. “See that group of eight in the corner? They are different ages and different backgrounds, definitely not related to each other. And it’s pretty clear from their body language that they don’t know each other very well.”

My husband took a glance over his shoulder. “I think they all signed up a weekend hiking expedition. This is their get-to-know-you dinner.”

I glanced at their footwear and nodded in agreement. Then I looked over to the young couple seated by the big mural, who were reaching across the table to hold hands. “How about them? What’s their story?”

My husband smiled. “A romantic comedy, for sure.”

The next day when we came in for breakfast, a group of women were sitting at the table where the hiking group had been.

I looked them over as I ate my potatoes. “The woman with duct tape on her finger is older than I am, but the other women are more like college age.”

“That’s easy,” my husband said. “Wedding party. The woman at the end was just saying something about the color of their dresses. The duct tape woman is the mother of the bride.”

His guess was right. When I began talking to Duct Tape Woman, she said, “I hurt my finger putting up wedding decorations.” She laughed and waggled a finger wrapped in bright purple duct tape. “We didn’t have any band-aids so we had to make due. I think we’re fifty miles from the nearest drugstore.”

“That’s going to look GREAT in the photos,” the young woman next to her teased.

I rooted through my camera bag and pulled out some band-aids. Duct Tape Finger took them gratefully. It turns out that the women had traveled from the northeast for this wedding. The burly man at the next table, who had taken off a leather jacket to reveal detailed tattoos on both arms, turned out to be a local. When the mother of the bride started fretting about ominous clouds, he jumped into the conversation.

“Could change any minute,” he said. “That’s how it is here.”

We’d spent so much time alone all week, hiking and driving and walking on beaches, that the extrovert in me couldn’t resist chatting with pretty much anyone who came in the restaurant. I drank three cups of herbal tea before I was ready to head out the door and start the day.

Snow in August

Driving into the mountains of the Pacific Northwest meant driving up winding roads into the clouds. The cool grey mist felt wonderful as we hiked. After the ridiculously hot summer we had at home, it felt a bit surreal to be walking on snow. Some of the trails were still closed from the record amount of snow the mountains got this year.

Sometimes the clouds would shift, and we’d catch a glimpse of the famous glaciers we’d come to see. Other times, the swirling fog kept us in our own private world, able to see only the trail and the trees nearest us.

Across the water

During our vacation, we traveled almost every day, sometimes into the mountains, and sometimes down along the coast, making a big circle in an attempt to get to cool beaches and scenic hiking trails. My husband had planned the trip, using google maps and online sites.

On the first day of the trip, he glanced at the printout directions and said, “This doesn’t make sense. We’re going less than fifty miles, but it says it’s going to take us hours.”

He looked at the map again. That dotted line that looked like a bridge? Turns out it was a ferry crossing.

So that’s how we began the trip. We waited for about half an hour in a long line of cars, then drove onto a ferryboat. Once we’d parked, we climbed up onto the deck, with a crowd of people who were excitedly clambering for spots at the rail.

From the highest deck, I could see across an expanse of blueness. I looked back to the little town beach, with its rocks and driftwood, and then at the green islands in the distance. Wind came whipping across the deck, bringing the smell of salt and dead fish. Seagulls screeched and swooped down, looking for scraps of food.

The engines purred into action beneath me. The boat moved slowly away from land. I went off to explore, checking out every deck. Two kids on the boat were running from place to place and yelling to each other in excitement. The wind was pretty cold, so most people went inside, but I didn’t want to risk motion sickness. Soon I saw our destination across the water: a little town piled on the side of a hill, with a big dock in front for the ferry. That’s how the vacation began.

Close enough to feel the mist

The unbearably hot summer we had gave me a new appreciation for waterfalls. We’ve got quite a few lovely waterfalls here in the northeast, but we also spent a lot of time standing in the misty spray of waterfalls when we were vacationing in the northwest.

Driftwood

The driftwood we saw was incredible: whole trees, big trees, washed up on shore, bleached by the sun, their roots forming play structures that made me remember what it was like to be a little kid.

Stroll

On our morning walk, we passed an older couple who were strolling along, talking quietly to each other, stopping now and then to admire the patterns the receding surf had left on the wet sand.

Sand beneath my toes

Yes, we took long walks on the beach. Because married life is just like those personal ads. Well, okay, maybe it's not, but on vacation, we get to pretend.

I kept taking pictures of the huge rocks that jutted out of the waves. I loved how dramatic they looked. The other cool thing was the nature of the light on the west coast, so different than what I’m used to on the east coast. I’ve often heard about the sunsets on the Pacific, but what I liked even better was how the early morning light came shining at an angle, turning wet sand everywhere blue, blue, blue.

Rock, sand, and ocean waves

After hiking for about 20 minutes through mossy trees and big ferns, we noticed that the path was going downhill sharply. “Listen,” my husband said. Above the sound of my own breathing, I could hear the familiar sound of ocean waves.

I’d known we were walking to a beach, so the stretch of sand didn’t surprise me. But I was startled by piles of driftwood we had to climb over just to get to the beach: long logs and whole trees, most too heavy to move. I wished immediately that I was eight, and I had a whole summer of lazy time to build forts on the beach.

The sand was just normal sand, like I’m used to on beaches on the east coast, but beyond the waves were the most incredible rocks. I’m not even sure if I should call them rocks: they were more like tall chunks of cliff that some giant had broken off from the mainland and plunked into the ocean. I’d read that native people in the area had buried ancestors atop some of these rocks, but I can’t imagine how they possibly got the bodies up there.

The only other people on the beach were a group of young people who reminded me of my own kids. They’d set up three tents amidst the driftwood, and they were climbing around on the logs, calling out jokes that made unoriginal use of the word “wood.” Two of them had waded out to the nearest of the cliff islands, and they looked intent on climbing it.

The sand was soft under my feet as I walked out to the cliff island, but the rocks closest to it were covered with barnacles, and I had to search out smooth spots to stand on. The boys clambered up the side of the rock, but they didn’t make it very far. The boy in the white t-shirt climbed to the first ledge and then jumped back down into the water.

He looked at me, grinning. “That hurt like hell. I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone without shoes.”