Author: Sue Fagalde Lick

writer/musician California native, Oregon resident Author of Freelancing for Newspapers, Shoes Full of Sand, Azorean Dreams, Stories Grandma Never Told, Childless by Marriage, Now Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer's, and the Up Beaver Creek novel series. Most recently, I have published three poetry chapbooks, Gravel Road Ahead, The Widow at the Piano: Confessions of a Distracted Catholic, and Blue Chip Stamp Guitar, plus a full-length collection Dining Al Fresco with My Dog. I have published hundreds of articles, plus essays, fiction and poetry. I'm also pretty good at singing and playing guitar and piano.

When is a Garage Not a Garage?

What is a garage? In modern American houses, it’s supposed to be a place to store the car, although in many homes it’s too full of other stuff for the car ever to fit inside. Tools, Christmas decorations, washer and drier, suitcases, garden equipment, stuff you plan to give to charity someday, and stuff you just plain don’t know what to do with live in the garage. At my house, it’s also where I store: pellets for the pellet stove and kindling for the wood stove, a spare tire, tire chains I have never used but must carry in the winter, my husband’s old bike that he never used, two dollies, three ladders, an umbrella for the patio table that fell apart ages ago, a Shop Vac, an American flag hanging above a Christmas tree stand, a few dozen empty boxes, two bags of Styrofoam “popcorn,” a file cabinet that didn’t fit in the house, and a nearly lifesize image of my late husband signed by all the folks at one of his many retirement parties. We call it Styrofoam Fred. But yes, I do get the car in. Thank God it’s small.

My single-car garage is very garage-ish. Cobwebs in the single-paned window, bare-wood walls, electric-powered door that rattles in the wind, bugs traveling freely through, mouse droppings in the corners, cold, stained concrete floor. When the door is open, everything is exposed to the world. It’s not the kind of room you’d like to live in—unless you’re a mouse.
But here’s the thing. The current garage is an add-on. The original two-car garage is now my den. In the wake of the great water heater flood of 2013 (see earlier posts), the bookshelves and carpet were ruined. For the last three weeks, I have been living with a den that more and more feels like a garage. Yes, it’s got sheetrock which I lovingly repainted two years ago. It’s got curtains, carefully matched furniture, and closets all along one end. I was so proud of that room, the one room I felt I had finished. But you know what? It’s still a garage. Behind the soggy sheetrock is bare wood. Behind the wall-hanging I made of felt and crochet hangs the fuse box. Under the Berber carpet was concrete, stained, pitted, cold and hard. Ants travel the edge of the southern wall like it’s a freeway. My sofa and TV sit like islands in a hard gray sea.
The former owners turned the garage into a den in 1990, eight years before Fred and I bought the house. They had four kids, a dog and a parrot; they needed the space. I don’t. I have often thought I’d rather have the house a little more compact and use the garage as a garage, but it’s too late for that. Unless the gradual westward settling of our land here eventually sends it into the ocean.
Post-flood, my beautiful den/library has been mired in insurance-hired service providers. Three guys came out and dried the old carpet for several days, then ripped it out. They tossed my bookshelves into the front yard. Last weekend, my neighbor got tired of looking at them and burned them in his fire pit, causing another neighbor to complain about the smoke. I have new bookshelves ordered and I’m waiting for a sample of my old carpet to be analyzed Back East so I can find out how much State Farm will pay for new carpet so I can finally order it and get it installed. Meanwhile, today, guys are supposed to come out and patch the hole the first guys chopped out of my wall. And then they will paint it. But the drywall will have to dry first, won’t it? And I don’t have any more matching paint.
It’s a slow process. I currently have mountains of clothing from the closets and approximately 600 books all over my house. I had no idea that room, that garage-turned-part-of-the-house, held so much stuff. I don’t plan to put a single thing back without reconsidering whether I need it.
Meanwhile my guest room bed is buried in clothing, books and musical instruments, but you’re welcome to sleep in the garage.

Tourists Invade the Oregon Coast

It’s Labor Day weekend, time for the Oregon coasties to hide while tourists take over the town. Most of us moved here to get away from crowds, to escape stop-and-go traffic, cities full of strangers, and long lines at restaurants, stores and gas stations. We like our small-town setting where we can move around freely, never wait in line, and always run into someone we know.

So does everyone else. The Oregon Coast is one of those places people go for recreation. As a result, from around Memorial Day to sometime after Labor Day, the place is packed with visitors. Every other vehicle crawling down the highway is from somewhere else. Lots of those vehicles are slow-moving RVs and big trucks towing boats, but even the little cars slow us down as the drivers gawk at the sights. I’m thinking okay, it’s the ocean, it’s a bridge, it’s a lighthouse, take your picture and move along.

At the grocery stores, travelers fill the aisles, not knowing where anything is and having to confer on every purchase. Shall we have corn with that? What kind of cereal do you like? Me, I’ve got my list, and I’m still in my church clothes. Let me get my food and go home. 

I drove through Nye Beach yesterday to take pictures and found nowhere to park. Visitors wearing shorts, leading children and dogs, and snapping pictures with their cell phones, clogged the sidewalks and spilled out of the eateries. Great sweating masses of visitors stared at the ocean. I surprised a couple kissing on the stairs by the Visual Arts Center.

I want them all to go home, but like everyone who lives here, I know our economy depends on folks from out of town coming here to spend their money. They stay in our motels and RV parks, eat our food, fill their vehicles with our gas, and buy our glass floats, thereby enabling the local kids to have school clothes and me to buy groceries. I get it.

Like a large portion of Oregon Coast residents, I moved from a place people leave for vacation to a place where people come. My husband and I were tourists here, too. We walked on the beaches, visited the lighthouses and aquariums, shopped in the gift shops, and ate in the restaurants. We fell in love with the place and resolved to move here someday. And then, like so many Californians who first came as visitors, we sold our house and drove the big rental truck north.

Now I have the nerve to resent all those tourists. Twenty years ago, I was one of them with my California license plate, slowing down traffic to take pictures. I must try to embrace these wide-eyed tourists as just like me. So come, let me show you my beautiful home. Then, either learn to drive the speed limit or go back to wherever you came. And by the way, put away the cell phone. Why drive hundreds or thousands of miles if all you’re going to see is your iPhone?

Tomorrow, the local kids are going back to school. Soon the weather will turn, the tourists will trickle away, and we will reclaim our town. But today, I’m staying home in my little piece of paradise.

Help, my books are loose and taking over!


Books, books, everywhere books. History books. Writing books. Creative nonfiction. Novels. Poetry. Books I wrote. Books my friends wrote. Books I wish I wrote. When they’re all stuffed in the shelves, it’s not so bad, but I had a little disaster last week. My water heater gave out. I woke up Tuesday morning to find water all over my laundry room, leaking across the concrete floor and under the dog crate, the recycle bin, the cabinet and the refrigerator. I waited most of the day for a plumber, who declared the water heater dead and replaced it with a new one.
I thought: okay, end of story. I didn’t realize until Wednesday night when I happened to walk barefoot in the den that the carpet was wet and squishy. You see, the laundry room and den used to be the garage. A former owner converted it into living space. Right now I’m kind of wishing he hadn’t done that. The water had leaked under the wall from the laundry room into the den, mostly along the wall lined with book shelves. Four five-shelf units, each six feet tall, 30 inches wide and full of books. Stuffed is a better word. And those are just the ones I’ve read.
In order to get to the carpet, I had to move the bookshelves. In order to move the bookshelves, I had to unload them. Unshelved, the books expanded like rice in boiling water. So now I have books in every room of my house, including the bathrooms. I have no place to sit in the living room except the dog’s chair or the floor. The soggy den is completely off limits, full of wet carpets and big dryers.
I spent Thursday moving books and blotting the carpet with towels. Washed and dried said towels five times then realized this didn’t help the padding underneath at all. Called the insurance company. Waited all day Friday for return calls. Their crew came out Saturday. First thing they did was declare the bookshelves dead. Made of pressboard, they were soaked on the bottom. Pieces of soggy pressboard fell off as two hefty guys carried them to the front yard and left them to await a trip to the dump. The insurance company will reimburse me for new bookshelves of comparable value. But it’s going to be a while before the room can be occupied again.
Meanwhile, I’m drowning in books. A quick estimate tells me at least 500 books are left homeless. That doesn’t count the ones that live in other shelves or boxes or drawers. Every time I’ve moved, my friends and relatives have complained about the books. “Jeez, how many books do you need?” they ask.
In the house where I grew up, there weren’t many books. One little shelf in the living room held a couple Bibles, cookbooks, knitting books, and a set of encyclopedias acquired one at a time at the grocery store back in the 1960s. It’s not that we didn’t read. We read constantly, but we got our books at the library. On the rare occasion when a book was purchased or received as a gift, we passed one copy around the family. Now I probably buy three or four books a month, and I keep all the ones I like, so they add up quickly. I have been meaning to go back and reread the books on the shelves to see if I still want them, but never had time. Now I’m forced to cull my collection.
I’m looking at these homeless books on my couch, my floor, my washing machine, every flat surface, and thinking maybe I should give all of them away. How often do I actually look at them? They’re weighing me down. Is this a home or a library?
I have quite a few e-books on my Kindle. With e-readers, there’s no need for bookshelves. I can store hundreds of books on something that fits in my purse. And if something happens to my Kindle, Amazon.com will magically transfer all my books to my new e-reading device. But it’s not the same. You can’t smell an e-book, can’t autograph it, can’t read it in the bathtub. And I don’t think my e-books will be around decades from now like many of the books on my shelves.
Meanwhile, I have books all over my house. The Lick library. If you want to borrow one or two or a dozen, come on over. My rates are incredibly cheap, and I’ll even give you a homemade chocolate chip cookie as a bonus.
What do you think? How many books do you own? How many books does a person need?

Books are alive and thriving in Lincoln City, Oregon

Those who predict the demise of books should have been at the Northwest Author Fair in Lincoln City, Oregon on Saturday. I joined 49 other authors packed into long tables outside Bob’s Beach Books to sell our books, schmooze with potential customers and network with other authors. My table happened to be next to the cash register. People were lined up buying stacks of books all day. Not necessarily my books . . . but books.

The day started with drizzle but soon changed to hot sunshine. Nonstop traffic passed nearby on Highway 101, and shorts-clad tourists toured the nearby antiques shops and stopped to browse the books. They brought kids who were bored and kids who liked to read, and quite a few brought dogs that socialized under the tables. I sat two tables over from popular author Phillip Margolin, and the fans surrounded him, buying new books and bringing bags of old ones to be autographed.

At my table, lots of people admired my book covers, especially the picture on the front of Stories Grandma Never Told (shown), but not too many actually bought my books. That’s okay. I enjoyed talking to them, and many took information they may use later to buy the books from me or someone else. Meanwhile, I was taking mental notes on what kinds of book they were buying. We had a little bit of everything at the tables–poetry, history, philosophy, memoirs, children’s books–but what people were carrying out by the dozen were genre fiction–mysteries, suspense novels, romance, fantasy, stuff like that. The woman next to me, Bernadette Pajer, did quite well with her Seattle-based mystery novels. In general, I saw that people wanted to buy books that looked familiar and accessible.

How do we convince casual readers that there is good stuff to be read in books that don’t have dragons, sexy women or men with guns on the cover? That one can read literary stories, essays or even poetry for fun? Or should I just write more fiction? When I offered freebies last year for both my novel Azorean Dreams and my memoir Childless by Marriage, the novel got far more takers than the nonfiction book did. I have a new novel on the way. We’ll see what happens.

A couple of people asked me if my books are available as e-books. They prefer to read on their Kindles or other e-readers. Yes, four of my books can be purchased (cheap) as Kindle e-books. Stories Grandma Never Told is the exception. It’s so packed with photos that I don’t know how to translate it into e-book form without making a mess of it. That leads me to thinking about a future in which all books are sold in electronic form. Would we have author fairs then? What would we put on our tables? How would we autograph our e-books? I don’t think we have to worry about that for a while. The printed book is definitely alive and thriving in Lincoln City, Oregon.

If you missed the fair, Bob’s has copies of all our books, along with lots of others. When I browse the shelves at Bob’s, I want to buy everything. And Bob’s Beach Books is owned by the same family that operates Robert’s Bookshop, the biggest used-book store I’ve ever seen.

Why not read a book today? It’s good for you.

THIS is how you bathe a dog


A while back, I posted here about “How Not to Bathe a Dog”. Annie had gotten into something smelly, and I had tried to wash her off in my bathroom. As you can read in detail at that post, I wound up naked in a tub full of fur and stink while she remained on the floor. I got so frustrated I washed her out there, ignoring the fact that the water was rising and starting to trickle toward the bedroom. I wound up with a big mess and a sore back. Bad idea.

More recently, on my first day back from my vacation, I was out front washing the mud and bugs off my car when I foolishly decided it would be okay to let the dog hang out with me. Of course when I opened the door, she sprinted across the street and out of sight. Luckily we live in the middle of nowhere so there’s no traffic and she never goes very far. I continued washing my car. When the dog showed up a half hour later, covered with Thiel Creek mud, I grabbed her collar with one hand and turned the hose on her with the other. I know the water was cold and she’s scared of the hose, but I was not in the mood to mess around. Effective but heartless.
Last week, I faced another dog-washing situation. Annie had been scratching for days. Every time I looked at her, she was either scratching or twisted around staring at her tail. Her butt and legs were wet and red. Unacceptable. We’ve done the vet routine with oral and topical medications and changing her diet to see if she has a food allergy. Expensive and ineffective. Apparently she’s hypersensitive to fleas. I sat with Annie for a while, plucked a flea off her paw despite using the expensive flea gunk, and decided a bath might help. But no hoses, no wrestling in my pink bathtub.
I called a groomer to see if I could get her in, but they didn’t call back. I loaded Annie into the car, drove by the groomer’s on my way to the Post Office, and discovered that, in the typical way of Oregon Coast businesses, they were closed on a Thursday afternoon. Why? I don’t know. The sign on the shop next door said THEY were at the beach.
So, I leashed up my dog and we went to Moondoggy, a doggy daycare and spa in Newport that offers facilities for owners to wash their dogs. It’s like a car wash for our four-legged loved ones. It was great! The woman there led Annie up three steps into a big tub, closed the door, harnessed her up so she couldn’t run away and got the water started at just the right temperature. She directed me to a shelf full of shampoos, rubber scrubbers, and towels, and left us to have fun.
To my amazement, my big nervous mutt stood calmly as I wet and soaped and rinsed her body, even her private parts and her head. She may even have liked it. I know I did. Quality time with the pooch, washing away her troubles (I hope). When she was clean, I rubbed her dry with a big towel much thicker and more absorbent than any of the towels I own. Afterward, she nibbled dog treats while I paid $10. Now my dog smells good, her fur is soft, and she’s scratching much less. That night, feeling better, she relaxed into a deep sleep in my lap. Such a deal. Moondoggy rules. THAT’S how to wash a dog.
My dad says when he lived on the ranch in San Jose, they used to have places like Moondoggy to wash the horses. The only difference was they played music to keep the horses calm. Good idea for next time.
Do you have dirty dog-dog-washing experiences you’d like to share? I’d love to hear them.

Coffee, coffee everywhere, and I just want my tea

Here in Oregon, we’ve got coffee kiosks on every corner, and I never stop. I don’t drink coffee. It’s not a health thing. I hate coffee. I can choke down coffee-flavored ice cream, and I have drunk a wee bit of Irish coffee (whiskey, whipped cream, sugar, and a littlecoffee), but you won’t catch me walking around with a Starbucks or Dutch Brothers cup of java. I have nothing against those places. I love their pastries. But I’m not a coffee drinker. I think it’s genetic. My mother didn’t like the taste either.
Coffee is almost a religion here in the Pacific Northwest. We’ve got our own Newport Bay Coffee Company, as well as our Starbucks, Pirate Coffee Company, Espressgo, Coffee Stop, Dutch Brothers, Pacific Grind, Central Roast, and more. Some folks can’t seem to get through their day without hitting the drive-through. One actually HIT the drive-through in June at Dutch Brothers in Newport. She lost control of her car on the way in and wiped out a stop sign, a fire hydrant and some landscaping, ending up with her car on its side. Emergency vehicles and curious crowds lined the street like it was a parade, but the woman was not hurt, and the coffee-pouring resumed shortly after the car got towed away. She was arrested for DUII. I guess she really needed her coffee.
I don’t understand why people need so much coffee. I’ve noticed lines at the coffee places even on Christmas and Thanksgiving when presumably wherever people are going will have coffee. Folks get coffee on the way to get coffee. Of course what they’re buying may be fancy espresso drinks instead of just plain coffee. But how do they manage the expense and the calories? And how do they sleep at night with all that caffeine?
My late husband was a coffee guy, but just regular joe, please. Black. Strong. He’d buy bags of coffee beans and grind them up in this fancy grinder that sounded like it was shredding bones. An early riser, he took the grinder out into the garage so as not to wake me up. He could drink coffee at night and go to sleep just fine while a sip of his mother’s kahlua (made of vodka and coffee) would have me staring at the ceiling for hours. It was a sad day in Fred’s progression through Alzheimer’s Disease when he forgot how to make coffee.
I come from a different tribe. I drink tea. I require tea. Strong black iced tea at lunch, herb tea the rest of the time. I have been known to avoid restaurants that don’t serve iced tea, so I guess my addiction is just as bad as that of the coffee heads’. Most coffee places serve tea, but it varies in tastiness. Starbucks, for the record, I hate your chai tea.
My favorite coffee place is Arrowhead Chocolates in Joseph, Oregon, way in the northeast corner of the state. Arrowhead was the go-to place for those of us camping out at the Fishtrap writers workshop at Wallowa Lake last month. It has Wi-Fi, air conditioning, chocolate and yes, coffee from Stumptown Coffee Roasters. Plus, they have great tea. The owners take pride in coming up with new blends of teas, stuff I can’t even explain, but it always tastes good and is served over honest-to-God ice. Heaven.
Dear coffee drinkers, I don’t get it, but we’re each welcome to our own addictions. If you come to my house, I’ve got plenty of tea. If you need coffee, I’ve got some of that, too, but you’ll have to brew it yourself. I don’t remember how to work the coffeemaker either.
What’s your favorite caffeinated beverage?

Am I a Real Oregonian yet?

As of this week, it has been 17 years since my husband Fred and I moved to Oregon. The other day while walking my dog Annie, I saw a U-Haul truck at a nearby house. Looks like somebody is finally moving in. I’ll probably meet the new neighbors soon. I won’t be surprised if they moved up from California like we did.
The moving truck brought back so many memories. While we thought about it for years, our move was sudden—the house in San Jose sold in five days—and difficult—the truck broke down twice, it was over 100 degrees out, and we had to leave a lot of stuff behind for a second trip. (You can read all about it in my book Shoes Full of Sand.) By the time we left, I was beginning to realize what and who we were leaving behind. We both quit jobs we loved and said goodbye to family and lifelong friends. We had moved before but only within the Bay Area. We had no idea that this was a lot more than another change of address; we were embarking on a whole new life.
From the get-go, Fred loved it all, while I wanted to go home. We had never lived anyplace so beautiful or where the people were so friendly, but we had almost never encountered so much wet, cold, windy weather. We had never lived in a small town without shopping malls and lots of places to work. The gynecologist and the music store were 50 miles away in Corvallis. The airport was in Portland, a three-hour drive through snow and curvy roads. That first year, Fred went back to San Jose for two months to continue his income tax business while I was alone in the worst of the winters, missing my family so bad it hurt.
But we adapted. Although we knew only our realtor when we moved in, we made friends at the church, the aquarium, and various singing and writing groups. It got so we couldn’t go anywhere without running into people we knew. We relaxed into life surrounded by trees, rivers and the ocean, with clean air and no traffic. No more lines, no more crowds, no more angry, stressed-out people. With time to dive into our dreams, Fred volunteered at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, worked for the Flying Dutchman winery, and sang with the Coastalaires barbershop chorus. I wrote and published five more books, earned my MFA in creative writing, taught at the community college, sang in several different groups, and got a job playing music at church. Would this have happened in San Jose? Probably not. We’d still be stuck on the freeway.
Life brings sorrow as well as joy. We have suffered many losses in these Oregon years: my mother and both uncles, Fred’s parents, our dog Sadie, many other loved ones, and finally, two years ago, Fred himself, after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s Disease. I often find his loss unbearable. This house we bought together is too big, and the loneliness can be overwhelming. But my new dog, Annie, already five years old, is a huge comfort, and God has filled our lives with many blessings.
I love Oregon. When I come back from visiting California, I shout and honk my horn as I cross the border back into the Beaver State. When I think about moving back to the Bay Area, I feel as if I have been here too long to go back. After all, 17 years is almost one-third of my life. Of the 26 years Fred and I were married, we spent 15 of them north of the border. If we were plants, by now we would either have died or become firmly established in this sandy Oregon coast soil. How long does it take to become a real Oregonian? It depends on who you ask. To many, I’m an old-timer now.
My family’s roots go way back in California to the 1800s, to the arrival of John Cameron Gilroy, said to be the first English-speaking settler in California. And yes, they did name the town of Gilroy for him. But the Fagalde branch originally settled in Oregon. Jean Fagalde and his wife Maria Refucia Alviso lived in Damascus, southeast of Portland. They had 13 children, one of whom was my great-grandfather Joseph, who moved to California and married Luisa Gilroy. I’m still learning about that Oregon connection, but it makes me feel good to know I’m not the first Fagalde to live here.
Do I have regrets? Some. The biggest is not being close to my 91-year-old father at this time of his life, or to my brother’s family, who live near Yosemite. Fred’s kids and grandchildren have all grown up while we weren’t around. I hate that. But I don’t regret moving here. I just wish I could convince everyone to join us so we could all live here together.
Will I stay here forever? I don’t know. It’s where I am now, and I thank you for taking this journey with me. Keep coming back. We have so much more to explore.

Retreat and re-entry: coming back from Fishtrap

Two weeks ago today, I had just arrived at Fishtrap, a weeklong writing workshop at Wallowa Lake, near Joseph, Oregon. Sleeping in yurts and tents in a Methodist campground, we spent our days attending workshops, writing, thinking, making new friends and listening to great writers read their works.
Fishtrap is really a retreat combined with a workshop. I often think I don’t need a retreat. Why go somewhere else when I already live alone in the woods? I don’t need to go into isolation somewhere else. But Fishtrap offers things I don’t have here, like great teachers and other people to eat with, talk with, and write with. It’s like finding a whole bunch of people to play with who like to do the same things I do. In the outside world, we might look like geeks sitting around writing, but not at Fishtrap.
It also offers me a chance to unplug. Literally. Normally I’m online all day and watching TV all evening. It’s a major eater of my time and a huge distraction. I also play a lot—too much—Spider Solitaire (don’t start, you’ll get hooked!). We had no Wi-Fi, no cell phone reception, no TV. Without them, I suddenly had lots of time to write, read and play music.
Back home, people ask “How was your trip?” I say “Good,” which doesn’t begin to describe it, and then we move on to the business at hand. In fact, yesterday my boss didn’t even mention my trip. He just started barking orders. Fine. He can’t disturb that peace inside me.
Imagine sitting by a river in the sun, with only other writers, deer, squirrels, Stellar Jays and robins for company, writing with paper and pen until a soft gong calls us back to the patio to talk about our poems and, by extension, our lives. Fishtrap was not a total retreat. We had classes and homework and a schedule, but we left everything at home behind. I could take the time to meditate on the bark of a tree for as long as I needed to truly see it. And then I could write a poem about it.
Of course there are inconveniences. Every time I went into town, I discovered I had book orders that I needed to fill before I got home. (I don’t know why I’m suddenly getting so many orders, but keep them coming. Visit http://www.suelick.com/Products.html) I had plenty of books in my car, but filling an order away from home meant finding a computer connected to a printer to print out the paperwork, putting together books, packaging, mailing labels and tape and getting the packages to the local post offices. It’s easy at home, but quite a challenge on the road. I’m thinking of recruiting someone to manage my Blue Hydrangea Productions business while I’m gone on future trips. Any volunteers?
Aside from the books, nothing else from home mattered. If something major happened, my family knew where to reach me, but otherwise, I could forget about everything. I didn’t have to cook; I showed up three times a day for fabulous food— French toast, pancakes, eggs and bacon, lasagna, fajitas, fried chicken, salads, fresh fruit, cookies, brownies, strawberry shortcake . . . and I got plenty of exercise to work off the calories. I didn’t have to take care of my dog, wash dishes or clothes, or deal with the massive piles of unfinished work that nags at me. I could just read, write, play music, do yoga, explore, eat, and sleep.
Before I came home, I went to Montana to do some research. I did turn on the TV, radio and Internet, but I kept that peaceful feeling and was conscious of not filling my mind with junk. I could and did turn them off and continued to write.
As I got closer to home, I started feeling the pain of reentry. Time to face all those things I put into the “after Fishtrap” category. I had hundreds of emails to deal with, tons of photos and pages of writing to process, meetings coming up, music to prepare, company coming, bills to pay, the dog wanting all my attention, and of course the need to come up with my own food. But I came home with a clear mind and thoughts about how to make my everyday life better. I’m looking at everything with fresh eyes. That’s a value of a retreat.
I long for the simplicity of my yurt, one room with only the things that fit in my car, and only the Fishtrap schedule to control my time. But I’m also enjoying sleeping in my own bed, snuggling with my dog, choosing my own food, reconnecting with my friends, and getting back to work. The challenge is to keep that peaceful, pared-down feeling at home every day. It is possible. I’m sure of it.

Writing my way across four states

Pondering the river during Fishtrap poetry workshop
This week I drove through four states in one day. Twice.
Sunday I woke up in a yurt at Wallowa Lake near Joseph, Oregon. Outside my window, deer grazed on dandelions and a covey of quail chittered in the bushes. I dressed, walked to the lodge for a breakfast of homemade coffeecake and cantaloupe, said goodbye to my Fishtrap writer friends and drove away. That night I went to bed in Missoula, Montana at a Howard Johnson’s on a busy highway lined with motels, restaurants, casinos and car dealerships. To get there, I had driven over 200 miles of winding roads from Oregon through Washington and Idaho and into Montana. I went from the vast farms and cowboy hills of Eastern Oregon through the Blue Mountains and along the Lochsa River until I finally reached the rolling hills and suburban landscape of Missoula. Seventy-five mile-per-hour speed limit and no sales tax. Woohoo!
After checking in at Howard Johnson’s with Indian desk clerks whose English was unintelligible, I drove down the street to Applebee’s and suffered culture shock after a week in nature at the Fishtrap writer’s workshop. No wi-fi, no phones, no TV, no news. We sat by a river talking about poetry, wrote songs under the trees, and told secrets by the campfire. We ate healthy cafeteria style meals. Suddenly I was in a noisy restaurant with an over-solicitous waiter named “Luc” who was waiting for me to choose from a menu of over-seasoned high-calorie entrees. As I settled for a plain turkey sandwich, my cell phone rang for the first time in over a week. No!
Why was I in Missoula? The main character in the novel I’m almost finished with lived in Missoula before she came to Oregon. Toward the end, she goes back for a while. Because I was so close to the border at Wallowa Lake, I decided to see Missoula for myself. I’m glad I did. You can’t really get the flavor of a place from the Internet. I was able to visit the places where she and her husband lived, worked, worshiped and shopped. I ate in the restaurant where she ate. I had a great time following my fictional character through this real setting.
But it got hot, very hot, and I needed to get back to my own nonfiction life. So Tuesday I headed west, taking a different route this time. I drove through C’oeur d’Alene, Idaho, stopped for lunch in Spokane, Washington (great food at the Timber Creek Grill Buffet), and crossed the Columbia River into Oregon near Umatilla. I honked my horn in glee. Hello, Oregon!
Four states in four days. Twice. I bunked in Arlington, Oregon Tuesday night, woke up yesterday at 5 a.m. to the roar of truckers starting their engines and a freight train blasting its horn and set my GPS for “home.” After 1,600 miles, the only state I wanted to be in was a state of rest.
Stay tuned for trip highlights and pictures in the next few posts.

An Old-Fashioned Fourth of July in Waldport

As the sun sinks through a cascade of pink and orange clouds toward the sparkling ocean, the crowds pack the beach in Waldport, Oregon. The water of Alsea Bay laps ever closer to their blankets and camp chairs while blond blue-eyed children covered with sand from filthy face to chubby toes eat cotton candy and hot dogs and ask for the hundredth time, “When will the fireworks start?” “When it gets dark,” their parents answer, praying that it will be soon.
Meanwhile local teens and young adults who have known each other since they were little eat hot dogs from the hot dog cart, promenade along the beach and the parking lot or lean against their old cars that barely run. They compare tattoos and bright-colored fingernails, share pictures on their cell phones, and count the hours till they have to go back to work bagging groceries, pumping gas, or selling ice cream cones.
On the parking lot above the fray, sheltered against my friend Tim’s insurance office, we grownups sit in our folding chairs, wrapped in red, white and blue sweatshirts and blankets as the warm day cools into a typical coastal chill. We have eaten hamburgers, pasta salad, deviled eggs and Oreo cookies, drunk soda pop and water, played cards, sung songs, and talked for hours. Now we wait for the fireworks.
Around us, people light up the fireworks purchased in the local stands. Two girls pass waving sparklers. A firecracker pops. A roman candle sizzles and sends up red and yellow shoots of fire. The sky darkens.
Finally the show begins with a boom out over the bay. One after another, then two, three, four, ten at a time, the fireworks light up the sky in gold, green, red, purple and white, some shaped like flowers, others like clouds or stars or rings. Some feel as if they’re coming right toward us. Some linger and slowly fade. Some sizzle or pop or whistle. It goes on and on. Smoke hovers over the quiet ripples of blue-black water. Couples lean against each other, hold hands, and kiss. Mothers cuddle their little ones. “Good one,” says a deep-voiced teen.
I think of all the fireworks I’ve seen in my life, where I was, who I was with. Disneyland. Great America. Giants stadium. Santa Clara County Fair. Over the buildings from my front lawn. My honeymoon. I sigh, missing my husband, but not missing the big-city displays with their crowds and traffic. I have seen bigger, more exciting shows, the fireworks matched to music as I sat in stadiums with thousands of people, but this small-town gathering of friends feels like Fourth of July should feel, even if it happens on July 3. It feels like home.
The holiday festivities continue today with fireworks, farmers markets, barbecues, concerts and more in Yachats, Newport, Depoe Bay, and Lincoln City and Toledo, and we have another sunny day to enjoy it. Have a wonderful Fourth of July, my friends.