Hood River Blues

My entire life, I've always been a City Girl. The smallest town I've ever lived in was Midland, Texas, which had a population of 95,000 in the year 2000. Hood River, Oregon, currently has a population of 7,476 and sometimes feels like an alien planet with its isolation.

Living in this small town has taught me many lessons: to be grateful for the amenities that cities provide, to revel in the power of nature, to have a greater level of empathy for people with different needs and ability levels, and to check my privilege.

Through living with Ben and assisting him with his injury, I have become aware of how having an able body is a privilege that not everyone is granted. And how, living in the isolated countryside, an injury is can be completely debilitating and life-ending without assistance. Cities provide that assistance. For example, the city of Portland has multiple programs that offer free short-term wheelchair rentals to people who are in need. The city of Portland has sidewalks and public transit that are made to accommodate differently able people. The city of Portland also has a fleet of accredited taxis and Lyft drivers that can get you around town in a punctual and safe manner.

Ben cannot walk down our street because it is unstable mud. Ben could not walk up the stairs to our house without assistance for two months. Ben can not exercise Ollie because there is no fenced dog park in the city of Hood River and the only commonly-accepted offleash area is the sandy beach along the Columbia River and that is not handicapped-accessible. There are no buses in Hood River, and Ben cannot drive his car because he needs two working legs to drive a standard transmission vehicle. The fire department can help carry Ben from the driveway, up the stairs, and to the front door, but they cannot drive him to work. There are no car rental services in Hood River, no Lyft, and only one taxi driver who according to google reviews, is an unreliable and dangerous driver who will be, at best, 20 minutes late to pick up up.

Ben also does not have access to the best medical care in Hood River. Several times a month, he has to take unpaid days off of work so that I can drive him into Portland to speak with orthopedic surgeons who have actually preformed ACL reconstruction surgeries in the past year. There are no public gyms in Hood River that have the exercise equipment Ben needs to use to do his PT, so the only place he can rehab is leg is the PT center which is not open outside of work hours. Ben must decide between taking unpaid leave and doing his PT or not doing his PT. In Portland, there are multiple public gyms that have the equipment Ben needs to use and they are open outside of work hours so Ben can do his PT AND get paid.

Additionally, on the subject of gyms and working out, Hood River has taught me that climbing is truly a sport for the privileged city folks. We have no climbing gym in Hood River, and far too much rain and snow to make climbing outside viable. Therefore, if you want to be a climber and live in Hood River, your options are as follows: obtain an expensive gym membership at a crossfit gym and have access to a shitty bouldering wall with inadequate and unsafe pads, build a home bouldering wall (that will require you to be able to afford the space, tools, and materials for the project), or drive seventy five minutes each way into Portland to climb at one of the many gyms in the city. When I lived in Portland, I would climb 2-4 times a week, now in Hood River, I climb 1-2 times a month and my climbing has suffered.

While one could write off climbing as an activity for rich city kids, access to weights and cardio machines is a basic requirement for physical fitness. In Hood River, access to even a basic gym is an expensive privilege. While in Portland, I could pay 35 dollars a month to go to a local community center that provides weights, yoga classes, and cardio machines, I must agree to a six month commitment of 75 dollars a month for a stinky center with cramped facilities and broken equipment, or pay 59 dollars a month for access to a nice crossfit gym (classes will be extra and they don't offer yoga) and an additional 20 dollars per yoga class at one of the two downtown yoga boutiques. So, if I wanted to lift weights three times a week and go to yoga twice a week, my monthly expense would be 219 dollars a month or 75 dollars a month for access to facilities that will probably give me Hep C. It's easy to see how obesity has become so common in rural America- health isn't cheap out here!

In Portland, our most expensive gym, Planet Granite, costs 77 dollars a month and has access to a huge weight area, unlimited yoga and fitness classes, a giant bouldering area, ~100 roped climbing routes, a sauna, and access to trainers and coaches if you feel like paying extra. I laugh now when I think about how expensive I thought Planet Granite was...

One advantage Hood River does have, is that it is close to Mt Hood and skiing. This was the first year that I have skiied and so far, I've logged 25 days on snow this season. I am grateful to live so close to the mountain and not be trapped in the Portland traffic which can make the drive upwards of two hours sometimes. Access to the mountain is one of the best things Hood River has had to offer. Ben and I had both wanted to support the local ski shop in town, but after they told Ben he'd be fine in skis longer than he requested with higher DIN settings than he requested (spoiler alert: he tore his ACL on those skis when the binding didn't release) and they ruined my new skis when I took them in to have bindings mounted, I really can't recommend them in good consciousness to anyone. Go to EVO or REI in Portland, don't risk yourself or sanity in Hood River.

But the skiing and the windsurfing is how Hood River pulls in the tourists. The city population doubles and triples in the summer when the crowds come in. The tourists drive up the costs for goods and services, for real estate, and serve to further alienate the local population. If you live in Hood River and don't work for Insitu or a couple other businesses, you're a poor service industry worker. So that 500 ski pass or 59 dollar gym membership are going to be really tough to justify after you pay for health insurance and face rent costs that rival Portland's. Because the town is so full of tourists, it's difficult to meet locals and make friends. Many people are seasonal employees who chase with wind or snow. I have been lucky to meet some of the girlfriends of Ben's coworkers and they are nice people who I have become friends with and am thankful for, but at 28, I'm too young to be a kept woman and am hungry for the work opportunities that exist in Portland.

Why pay more for shitty services to live in a town that's just as, if not more expensive that Portland?
Why remove yourself from access to social services and community centers?

The answer to that is, because it's so beautiful here. Look at the mountains, the river, and the flowering orchards that stretch on for miles. Oh, those orchards? Yeah, they used to belong to a mostly Japanese population until they were stolen by the government when we let xenophobia have precedence over sanity and interned our own citizens because their skin was a color other than white during WWII. Also, those orchards rely on workers who may or may not be citizens of this country and face deportation under the Trump regime. And before all of that, this land hosted a thriving population of Native American peoples but the white folks had no problem kicking them out and damning over Celilo Falls.

I do not think I have ever seen a black person in Hood River. Ben has one Asian-american coworker who came here from Seattle. Hood River does have a Hispanic population of note, yet you rarely see people of color outside of Walmart or Safeway. I wonder if that is because those populations congregate more around Church life and have little interest in windsurfing and skiing, or if it is because they feel unwelcome and uninvited to these expensive outdoor sports.

On the subject of Walmart, I have met many people in Portland, and include myself in this group who "would never shop at Walmart" people who "can't understand why someone would willingly go there". I can now understand how someone can shop at Walmart, because it's the only place in a sixty mile radius that sells extra wide Ace Bandages and good ice packs, because in Hood River, you don't have the luxury of choice on the matter. In the tiniest way, trips to Walmart have made me most aware of the rift between city and rural life.


I don't know how to fix Hood River on its own, or how to bring diversity back to the town. I do think we can prevent future Hood Rivers from happening by Never Again interning populations of American citizens and shipping them away from their homes because of the color of their skin and wht country their family was from. I think that if our country focuses more on installing sidewalks and public services in towns like Hood River that quality of life would improve. I think Hood River and similar towns would improve if they had local community centers with access to cheap fitness, and there was incentive for good doctors to practice in the country.

I think that there are many beautiful aspects to Hood River and I am grateful to be able to took at two gorgeous volcanoes everyday, but it is foolish to assume that the picture-perfect apple blossoms reflect a perfect reality out here.

On the threshold

Fighting the last bits of gravity before I can escape the atmosphere of the Known.

A blank and endless Space
Expansive, mysterious
Relentless.
Billions and Billions of stars
Bright, twinkling, distant,
Dull, dim, and difficult to see.
Exploding, dying, giving birth to new stars.

Seen from the past with clarity
Yet their present can only be projected
Based on models we have created
That follow the Rule of our Logic
And work within our frames of reference.
All that we know-
All that we know
we project, and see patterns in this expanse
that make sense.

Divine detail, vast potential.
Beauty, cold, distant- molded into a form we can understand,
label and measure,
yet not see.

The light of our own star is so bright that it sustains us
the Past sustains us.
And we dwell there, thoroughly in our mind,
blood cells made of regret oxygenate our body
memory is a pulse that flutters
sometimes strong and steady, then irratic.
Shame, isolation, fear, doubt, pride, and joy.
Steady the pulse with Gratitude and look outward
beyond the body, beyond our planet and our star
Beyond at the giant sea of infinite yearning
that escapes our ability to know
and understand.

Where the silence is dead and unforgiving,
Where what Is now may not be
And is Absolute

The future is

Reflections on No Man's Land Preview and Panel

I've always wanted to fit in somewhere, to find a community that I belong to and that gets me. Church and college never did it for me- too many people taking the moral high ground and jumping to judgement before really looking at the person in front of them. The Portland theatre community never did it for me- too focused on rehashing stories that had already been told because everyone wants to see stories they know- Death of a Salesman, Shakespeare, and musicals will sell better than work that asks real questions. The film industry kind of did it for me but it's still a very male and unhealthy work environment that lives up to every crazy rumor you've ever heard. The Mazamas kind of sort of did it for me but never really felt like the community for me, they're a big organization with their own politics and ways of doing things that work for them, but don't adapt well to improvisation and in many ways still need to move into the 21st century.

On March 13th, 2017, I think I finally found a community that gets me. There's an intersectional feminist climbing community that's small and growing and has some really cool things to say.

Sometimes when I'm riding the chairlift up at the ski resort or stuck on the wall trying for a tough move, my mind will wander into nebulous thoughts of "how did this come to be like this?" I'll read though magazines like Alpinsim and count the number of women I see in photographs and realize women are only featured in ads and not stories. I'll listen to some ski bros or climber bros make fun of the gumbies, or gapers, or whatever term we are using these days to put others down because they are new to our sports. I look at my gear collection and cringe at how much of it is pink. And I will wonder, frequently, if I would be a more accomplished climber if I were male.

In the past, I've written about the choices I've made to push myself and the many voices who have told me I'm going to die. I've made the same choices that male climbers with less experience have made and while their peers have applauded their efforts to push themselves, I've been told that I shouldn't do those things. I've been told to wait, to defer, to take more classes, to set smaller goals. I've let this timidness bleed into my climbing and self-worth. It disgusts me now and I work to rid myself of toxic self-doubt.

And it's just so hard to find other ladies who want to push themselves out there. I thought I was some kind of freak because I could not find other peers with similar goals. I've found lots of dudes to climb with, and they're mostly awesome, but I'm hungry for female mentors and partners who tell me to GO FOR IT.

If you can't find what you need around you, expand your perspective.

Thanks to the magic of facebook algorithms, I found out about a film screening and panel in Portland that focused on interestional feminism and the climbing community. The event was put on by Terra Incognita media and they are such a refreshing voice in the community. There was a panel discussion and some really inspiring films afterword. Finally, the discussion was briefly opened to questions, and you have the token male response of "but what about me?" I wish I'd had something interesting to ask at the time, but I was affected so deeply by what I had experienced that night that I needed some time to process my thoughts and reflect on questions to move the discussion forward. I think that if I had a question then, it was "what's next?"

And so, here are my response to the panel questions. These are only the questions I wrote down, and I may have worded things differently than they were originally stated.

What is wilderness and what do you make of the commodification of wilderness?
To me, wilderness is that dark place inside your heart where fear and doubt live. It's a wild unknown where we need to ask our tough questions and trust ourselves to persevere. Technically, wilderness is undeveloped wild land. It's an area you can shoot your guns or let your dog run offleash. I love the wilderness areas for the freedom they give me to camp and let Ollie go nuts under the big sky. It's a gift though, and a somewhat artificial place because the native animals and people of the north american wilderness have been wiped out. It's awesome not having to worry about things trying to kill me outside.
Wilderness is commodified in how we profit off of it. Guiding companies, hunters, instagrammers, hikers- we all use it and mostly see it for what we can get out of it. I hike in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness because I want to summit Mt Daniel, I make paintings of mountains because they represent an emotional moment, most people go into wilderness for what they can get out of it.
Conservation and the outdoor industry do not go hand-in-hand. Do you really need that new laptop when the materials used to craft it were not ethically sourced?

Talk about the "violence of othering" in a warming world
This is a complex one that I need to educate myself more about. I think it's really easy for people to get on an elitism kick because they do things better. They eat a cleaner diet, they live in a city that has public transit so they don't need to own a car and don't understand how cars are "necessary" for some people. They have the money to buy an electric car and think all oil companies are bad. I think it's really easy to laspe into judgement without expanding your perspective and asking "why".

I think we have a really strong instinct for self-preservation. It extends to ourselves first, then our immediate family, loved ones, friends, neighbors, political party/church members, fellow citizens, allies, and then maybe people of non-allied nations. I think most people can't look beyond their own personal bubble, and very few can see beyond their immediate community of people who look like them. I think we need to look at ourselves as a species first. I think that "better" needs to mean "better for all" and not "worse for some".

How do you see these problems perpetuated or addressed?
I think a lot of the national dialogue that has come out of the 2016 US election is working to address this issue. People are starting to see that "us vs. them" isn't going to win humanity any favors and we are weaker divided. I am hopeful that the increasing frequency of citizen activism continues.

Your Pursuits vs. Helping someone else?
This is a tough one. I think people are doing the best they can and have really limited resources to care. I sometimes think the world would be better off if we gassed all of humanity, but humans are also ingenious creatures and technology is really cool. I think as a society we are reaching the breaking point where there aren't enough well-paying jobs for everyone to follow their pursuits- look at how automation is taking more jobs than outsourcing.
Society is due for an overhaul. I believe it will happen soon(ish) and hopefully for the better. I can't believe in a dark dsytopian future because hope must persevere.

Do you think that the "many tabs open/quick gratification" effects commitment to addressing real problems of the world?
Yes, but we must be careful when we decide what "real problems" are. I think our culture does not embrace slowness and honor process. I think we are very linearly focused on what we think a successful path should look like.  I think it's a good thing there are groups putting together apps like "5 calls" because it makes things more accessible. I think that the best thing we can do is try and be nice to every person we interact with on a personal level. If you're a jerk to your neighbors, no one is going to want to listen to your speech about not dumping car oil down storm drains. And I know it's exhausting to always be nice and approachable and I'm not sure how to make being decent less exhausting.

What's your relationship with the word Feminism?
I think it's awesome!!!! I'm really lucky to have educated feminist friends to talk to in my life. I think accusing someone of being a feminist is the modern day equivalent of calling someone a witch. I think the world has much larger problems than equality between the sexes, but keeping the population divided is how to keep them controlled.

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Moving forward, I have to ask "what's the point of it all?" and I think I know the answer. To do the best we can with the time we have. What we do with our lives is up to us, we can't do everything, but we can Care.

Edit: You can listen to the entire panel discussion by clicking this link to the podcast.

Skiing makes me feel really conflicted.

I wish I could say that I love skiing. That it's something I always wanted to do and I took to it quickly once I began the sport, but that's a lie. However, I am learning to accept skiing for what it is and find enjoyment in it.

I think I'll write up an actual post on skiing once the season ends and I have had a bit of time to reflect, and preferably after I've skied down Mt Hood. For now though, here's a list of bullet points that summarize my confliction about skiing:

• Barriers to entry. Extremely expensive. Hell, it took me three years just to buy enough cold weather clothing to stand on Mt Hood in January. A good AT setup is probably going to cost more than my car. Not to mention the cost of lessons and lift tickets.
• The gear is complicated! Even as a newb, there's a LOT to learn. And then learn again. I thought I just totally sucked at skiing for my first month. Turns out I needed to buy my own boots and modify them to fit my feet and then I could magically ski. I feel lucky to have access to so much awesome cheap used gear out here, but can't help but remembering how simple it was to show up at a bouldering gym and only need a 3 dollar rental for stinky shoes. Now I need to figure out what kind of skis and bindings and types of wax to use.
• Elitism. This could be subjective and probably says a lot about my insecurities, but I have yet to have a friend offer to ski a green with me. Only blacks. Black diamonds are everything. If I want to learn, I'm referred to paid lessons. And while that's AWESOME that people make their liveihood outside, lessons still cost $. Oh! and I also my college boyfriend's mom just KNEW we would never be a thing because I couldn't ski at the time and OMG SKIING WOO!!! SKIERS ARE BETTER THAN YOOOOOOOU!
• Resort culture is obnoxious. 
• White people everywhere.
• Less than ideal gender balance on the slopes. Also, online ski communities seem to have more misogyny. 
• Culture of elitism. If I hear someone call someone else a gaper one more time I think I'll scream. Also the amount of fancy extras that resorts try to sell you.
• Risk of injury. Ben tore his ACL a month ago. A lot of people tear their ACLs. Generally, ski injuries are sudden and catastrophic. Most climbing injuries occur from improper safety checks or are accrued over periods of overuse and can be mitigated by smart training.

Translated into climbing terms: learning to ski is like being forced to start leading trad the first day you put on climbing shoes and no one wants to climb 5.6 with you so you have to learn how to rope solo and then you go to lessons which are awesome but really only teach you how to tie into the rope and lock a carabiner. Everyone around you is a dude and kind of a jerk who just wants to talk about how good the rock is on his proj and they learned to climb when their parents took them to the rock gym when they were toddlers before they ever had a choice. Then you realize that the rental rack you've been climbing on is only tricams and if you spend a ton of money on cams you can climb easier and you stop freaking out because now you can make good placements in that vertical crack you were stuck on for a month. Then is becomes awesome and fun!

Life is a Strange Loop

If I won the lottery tomorrow, here is what I would do:

Put Ollie in dog camp and whisk Ben off to Thailand for two weeks. Then we would return to the States, buy a tricked out Sprinter van and plot a year long climbing road trip through the country and see all of our friends along the way. After that, we would find a city that we both loved and Ben could enroll in an aerospace masters program, I would start an art gallery, we would buy a tiny little house with lots of windows and put everything else into a trust to grow with us.


In some ways, my journey this year has mirrored that escapist fantasy. I built out my truck and explored the country, Ben and I moved in together, and I've made a few more paintings. But the reality of day-to-day life is a bit more complicated. I have sought advice on the subject of what to do next and it is all completely variable:

"You find a job you don't hate, one that has benefits and enough time off to climb a few big things on the weekends each year, and you work that and make a good life for yourself"

"If I could choose living out of a van or going to LA for work, I'd choose living out of a van, LA will always be there"

"If you don't go hard for your dreams you won't get them, what are you working for?"

I am learning that there isn't a narrative for life, there isn't a plan. There's just what happens around us and what we choose to do about it.

I want to be an active participant in my life. I want to stand confident in myself again.

When I was living out of my truck, camping on BLM land it sure was easy to feel content about life. Back in Oregon struggling to find employment, thinking about things like renewing insurance plans and whether or not you can afford a gym membership is not so fun.

I think about where I've been and where I want to go and the whole thing just feels like a mess. If I could do anything, go anywhere, I'd move down to New Mexico where I would paint and ski all winter, hike and climb in the shoulder seasons and spend the summers climbing in Wyoming. Maybe one day that will be possible. Maybe that's my retirement life goal. Maybe that's a next year goal.

But that's not the goal for now. For now I need a job, some satisfaction in life, and a good amount of adventure.

I stand very firmly by my decision to leave the film industry in favor of work-life balance, but maybe I don't need to leave the creative world entirely. It doesn't make sense to leave behind the thing you love just because you had a bad go at it. I tried my best, I worked HARD, and I was successful- professionally.

Now it's time to be successful personally.

Emerson on travel:

Travelling is a fool's paradise. We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern Fact, the sad self, unrelenting identical that I fled from.