I remember long ago being out for a drive with my dad through the rural roads of Whatcom County.  Suddenly we were in the small town of Sumas. 

“How did we get here?” I asked, thinking we had been nowhere near this town.

“We snuck up behind it, so it wouldn’t see us coming,” Dad answered. 

The idea of sneaking up on a town and surprising it was somehow hilarious to me.   Like the town cares!  But this idea of sneaking up behind places became part of our family lore.  Why drive in on the main drag when you can sneak around from behind the hill?  Hmmm, as I think about, it, that may explain my adult aptitude in getting temporarily lost.  Regularly.      

Today I am sneaking up on writing about my hometown of Blaine, Washington.  I was in a slump.  You know how sometimes we think we are supposed to be doing a certain thing, at a certain time, and then, somehow, we don’t?  Or can’t?  After spending so much time writing humor, poetry, essays, I got it into my head to try to write a fiction novel.  Other people write novels, how hard can it be?  They’re just a long format, right?  I had planned to get started this winter.  I knew where to set the novel, in my hometown of Blaine.  I knew the scenes in the novel would include eagles, tide flats, harbors, and maybe an old dairy farm or three.

Yet there the idea sat, like a dead seal in the mud.  I mulled it over and pushed it around in my brain like a kid with a piece of driftwood poking at a carcass.  I thought it over in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep.  No plots announced themselves.  No characters introduced themselves.  The novel idea was beginning to rot.  Seagulls were loudly circling.  Still, my brain continued visiting Blaine, smelling the tide flats, looking across the harbor.  I have finally determined I don’t have a novel in me.

Once I abandoned that idea like a leaking boat, I started writing out a story my friend had told me about living in Blaine.   I was able to write a short, fictionalized scene.  Not a full story, and definitely not a good draft, but at least the start of something.  Or maybe the end of something if it doesn’t get better. Yet, getting started made me want to write more about Blaine.  I still don’t feel a large work of fiction headed my way, but at least I’m getting some writing practice in.  We’ll see what happens when I drive around Birch Point and sneak up on the scenes and stories of Blaine from the other side of the bay.    

IT’S GETTING CLOSER!  Woops, was, I writing too loud?

I haven’t been blogging about my book-in-the-works, because I didn’t actually know what the publication schedule might be.  But it’s getting closer!  A local publisher, Gray Dog Press, is laying it out for me, and will do a small print run of the book.  Then I will figure out how to get it on Amazon (Kindle Direct Publishing) and IngramSpark (another book distributor).  It shouldn’t take too much longer, several weeks or a couple months, rather than my previous vague schedule which had been “someday”, or “years” or “no idea”.  And then my work begins: getting the book “out there”.

Riding Lessons, Things I Learned While Horsing Around, is a mostly humorous memoir about living with horses and learning from horses. As you will see, I had a lot to learn, made a lot of mistakes, and laughed a lot.  In addition to the humor essays there are a few serious pieces, some poetry, and some blog-like pieces.  Early readers have enjoyed the book, even the non-horsey readers.

Self-publishing is all new to me, so it’s taking some time.  I am learning so much!  My writing and non-writing friends are helping so much!  You know who you are—beta readers, a hired editor, photographer friends, instructor friends, trail riding friends, writing group friends, old friends, new friends, family…  Thank you.  We’re almost there! 

If you want an update when it’s done, follow my blog, or send me an email or message.  I’ll be in touch as the process continues.   

Woohoo! Did I mention I’m excited?

I would like to sell you this book of poems.  It’s a good book of poems; I’m a good writer and I work hard at my trade.  You won’t be disappointed if you like poetry.  It’s possible that even a non-lover of poetry will like my book, because I’m that good.  But wait, if you like my book you will want to read all my poems in the future—here, let me sell you a poetry credit card.  You need this credit card because if you sign up, you will get a discount on every future book of mine.  Of course, I’m a writer, not a credit bank.  But don’t let that worry you, because some other outside entity is managing it, and you will sign your life away to get my future poems half off.  Just know your credit will always be golden with me.  I may or may not write a poem for your future destination, but if I do, you will have that card to take full advantage.  I may or may not write a poem to fit your eventual travel dates, but if I do, you will have time to enjoy it.  Sign up now, and you will get a companion poem and a place to hide your baggage.  Or my baggage.  For a short time, I offer a bonus of three poems on topics you aren’t interested in.  I’m sure you’ll get some mileage out of those.  Don’t worry though, someone is making money, and it’s not the poet.  Just giving credit where credit is due.  

(Photo credit Chris Frederick)  

I wrote this poem during that other bad winter, when the City of Spokane pushed all the snow into the center lanes of the arterials, and you couldn’t change lanes downtown except at intersections. It made for interesting driving, for sure. The snow piles in parking lots began to dwarf the buildings. The photograph I have from this year doesn’t do it justice, but you can start to imagine icebergs on the parking lot sea. During that bad winter building roofs were collapsing from the weight of four feet of snow. We aren’t there yet this year, but the winter is still young.

That Winter

Icebergs in parking lots—
imagine them tipping over 
top-heavy 
between waves of rudderless cars at the mega-mall. 
That was the beginning of something long: 
one long worry.

As I look through my old pieces of writing, I find that I spend a lot of time complaining about the weather. I love being outside normally, but I am not a winter sports enthusiast, and winter often feels like a time to just get through. It was 4 degrees this morning, and it’s getting colder tonight. Winter is upon us this solstice day. But the sun is out!

Let Me Die in the Winter

It’s not really living.  Let me die in the winter when the mud pulls my boots off my feet and the rain floods the low spots and all my leathery skin mildews.  Let me die like my neighbor’s old horse when my teeth get worn and I have trouble chewing hay; hip bones push out through my fuzzy winter coat.  Put me out of my misery with a well-placed shot before the real cold makes my arthritic knees ache even more.  Let me die after the apple harvest, when I remember the sun and sweet tastes of summer, but before the ice needs breaking on the horse troughs, before the driveway needs shoveling to get the car in the garage.  Every time I go outside my fingers and toes scream, despite spending fifteen minutes adding layers in hopes of warding off the chill. Let me die in the winter when the nights are so long and clear that the moon and stars shiver in frigid air.  Let me die in the winter when snow softens angles and sweetens the earth, crystals of sugar, my mittened hands sculpt new white clay, and everywhere is shades of blue and light.  Wait.  Let’s not hurry this.  The days are getting longer.  I can make it to spring.

And I finally caught it. Covid.  It wasn’t a bad bout, probably because I was vaccinated and boosted and boosted again.  But I still isolated in my house, and away from my family.  Gramma hunkered in her house next door, and my adult son stayed with a friend.  Both my son and my mom had Covid before, and did not enjoy it, so they avoided me.  Doug lived mostly downstairs.  I, on the other hand, hung out upstairs, in the office and the sewing room.  Mostly the sewing room because the twin bed in there is way more comfortable than the chaise lounge in the office.  And by sewing room, I mean sewing machine room.  Let me take a moment to count the sewing machines.  Eight.  Eight sewing machines if you include the White up in the closet that is really a parts machine due to a broken gear deep inside its guts.  I am slowly, bit by bit, learning how to repair sewing machines, but I don’t do broken gears.  That would be the equivalent of open-heart surgery. I don’t do major sewing machine surgery. Yet.

When I am sick, and for me the Covid was like a bad cold, I don’t do creative work.  I don’t write poetry or essays because my brain is sluggish, as if it is filled with old varnished sewing machine oil.  But, when I am stuck in a room by myself with Facebook and YouTube, and eight sewing machines, I can definitely learn how to repair. My brain can still handle the step-by-step process of do this, then do that.  Seriously, I believe the only thing the internet and social media are really good for is showing us how to fix things.  And fixing old mechanical things keeps them out of landfills. Plus, it’s fascinating to learn how the machines work.

This week I fixed the Rocketeer.  I always wanted a Singer Rocketeer because they are so cool looking, as if the Jetson’s made a sewing machine.  That machine was giving me problems over the last few months, and I was really stuck and not progressing when working on it a half hour at a time.   But since I was basically locked in a room with it for several days, I had a whole lot more patience to watch you-tube videos to figure things out.  She now sews.  The bobbin winder winds.  And with the help of a vintage sewing machine Facebook group, I was even able to fix the broken hinge on her nose-door.  The machine’s name is Irma, because I found a cool handmade purse in the same thrift store as the sewing machine, and it had a label inside, “Made by Irma”.  Do you suppose Irma actually used that Rocketeer to make the purse?  Maybe.  Anyhow, I need to do some touch up paint on Irma, and a little cabinet restoration.  Then she is ready for a new home.  I thought I would love her, and keep her forever, but I love my other machines more.  Irma has to find a new home to make room for my next foster machine. 

Off and on during my Covid isolation, I also worked on my Dressmaker 2000 vintage machine.  She is strong.  She sews like a hungry draft horse turned toward home after a long trail ride: steady, focused, and nothing slows her down.  The Dressmaker does not have a name, but she is a keeper.  She did have a little problem with the bobbin clutch.  That’s the mechanism that stops the needle running when you wind the bobbin.  I tried to fix it while sick and isolated, but I couldn’t get the handwheel off.  I tried liquid wrench, heat from a blow drier, sewing machine oil, hammering… nothing budged it.  Eventually, after my isolation days were over, I made it out to a hard-ware store and bought a cool gizmo called a gear puller.  Once I figured out how to use it, the handwheel slid off smooth as a fried egg off Teflon.  Now that she does everything, the blue beast of a machine needs a name for sure.   Blue Bell?  Blue Beast?  Blue Whale? Dierdre the Dressmaker?  Maybe just Tank, because she sews over anything.  I shall have to think on it some more. 

I have three keeper vintage machines, and my son has two.  So, of the eight machines currently in the sewing room, I need to find homes for three.  The other machine I worked on while holed up was a Singer 15-90.  Gosh, it took some time and some serious internet surfing just to figure out what exact machine model it was. This machine is one of those old, classic, retro looking, black Singers.  A 1946 version with an electric motor.  We got the machine cheap, $13 at an estate sale.   After buying a belt, a new electric cord and foot controller, and some other small parts, we have $61 into this machine. My goal on these machine restorations is to break even, or to make a small profit to plow back into the machine rescue fund.  I’m not sure we will break even on this one.  But she sews nicely, and all the parts work, even the bobbin winder clutch.  This machine does not have a name, the next owner can have that privilege.

So the Rocketeer, the broken-gear White, and the 15-90 need to go.  Another machine I am keeping is Frankie, a gorgeous green vintage White sewing machine.  Frankie is short for Frankenstein because I brought her back from the dead.  She, along with the Dressmaker, came from a friends’ house when they were doing a big clean out.  Frankie was my introduction into the repair world.  Through Frankie we found a cool local repair shop that helped us with the final parts and pieces to get her running.  Machine repair takes a village.  

As I learned about all of the vintage machine types, I decided I really wanted a hand-crank machine.  This is a machine that is not electric, and rather than being in a big foot-powered treadle cabinet, it is a portable machine that runs by a hand-crank.  You crank with your right hand and guide the cloth to the needle with your left hand.  I don’t know why I’m so intrigued with those non-electric machines, but I am.  I finally found one locally, she is a Singer 99, and her name is Agent 99.  She works, no repairs were necessary.  Next time the electricity is out, I will be able to sew.  My son also has a treadle machine, a Minnesota, named Minny.  And he has another Singer 99, but it is electric.  That is my next project.  You begin to see why the sewing machine room is a little over-full right now. 

One would think I love sewing.  I know how to sew, but it’s not my passion.  I really like the machines, the engineering, and figuring out how they work.  In our throw away society this is a way I can push back and keep some wonderful machines out of the land fill.  If I can also repair some clothing, sew a boat cover out of tarp, or upcycle some wool sweaters, well, the more power to those machines.  Except for when we don’t have power.  Agent 99 has those days covered, too. 

Yesterday was a day without electricity.  We are having solar installed, and the workers had to revamp and replace our electric panel.  No power in the house.  I planned ahead and laid out some paperwork to do, including voting.  My cell phone worked, and I could do a bit of internet surfing on a slow connection.  But seriously, it was nice not to.  Any googling on judges running for office could wait until the next day.  Netflix could wait. The day ran at a slower unconnected pace. 

I did some outside work, shoveling manure.  I decluttered a couple rooms.  I ran a couple errands.  But I did not feel tethered to the internet, constantly checking Facebook or watching depressing news headlines.  I felt like I could breathe for a day, with less worry.  

I wrote a card to a friend, the paper kind, with a pen.  I did use my computer for writing, running on battery power.  But writing is less a connection with the outside world and more a connection with my inner thoughts.  I felt like I could think again. 

We still had running water, because there was power at the well house, and we could still flush toilets.  We had heat upstairs, with our propane stove.  We had battery powered radios for music.  But we also had quiet, in between the clunking and pounding of the workers.  I felt like I could hear again. 

I opened all the curtains to let the light in, brightening the dark rooms with natural light.  I felt like I could see again. 

I plowed through a pile of junk mail and read some magazines.  I started a new book before my introspective day was done.  I felt like I could read again. 

I might institute days like this weekly, or monthly.  Turning off TVs and internet, and just being.  I felt like I could be again.

I am a glacial erratic.  Can you see that scratch on my lower backside, where the glacier pushed me across bedrock?  So heavy, it made a groove.  It itches, and I can’t reach it.  Sometimes the wild rose scratches me there; it feels good and green.  I came from the mountain, pushed down hill then carried over land.  I was dropped into this field of pebbles. The only thing I have in common with my neighbor rocks is our igneous beginning.   Sometimes I think I can smell the sulfur from the volcano that formed me, but it turns out to be smoke from yet another wildfire. I can see for a long way, from the past, then across that valley to the river.  I am here for the duration, too heavy to roll, unless they build a road over me, or there’s another ice-age.  Time is short, and long, when you are made of granite.  Just forming took an eon.  That journey was amazing, though.  Thrust up from below the mantle, then solidifying and cracking, a small piece of a big mountain. The glacier ride was a breeze, just 10,000 years or so ago, a blip in my lifetime.  Now I watch.  Seasons change.  Trees grow, trees die. Cougars used to rest on me, now the lichen grows.  Freezing and thawing rounds off my edges a granule at a time, but I figure I’ll be here for a while longer before I erode down to join the soil.  

It got away from me this year: buttonweed, also known as common mallow also known as  Malva neglecta.  I’m pretty sure that Malva neglecta is latin for, if you neglect it, it will take over the world.  We have one more phrase for the plant at our house, but it involves swear words.  While I don’t mind swear words, I believe that the duty of teaching you or your family members important new swear words and phrases belongs to the parent or individual that is in charge of plumbing repairs in your house. I shall not overstep.

Back to the mighty freekin’ buttonweed.  When it first showed up at my house several years ago it was near the barn.  The seeds likely came in some hay.  It’s a pretty broadleaf plant with light pink/purple flowers.  What’s not to like?  So I let it go.  I didn’t know that it’s tap root grows thick and about 8 feet (okay, maybe only 8 inches) deep, making it as hard to pull up as a full-grown weeping willow.   I didn’t know that the cute button shaped seed pods produce a bazillion seeds in each pod.   (Okay, I counted them.  There are only about 15 seeds in each button shaped pod.  But they are very fertile, and I swear every single one germinates.) I also didn’t know that the horses won’t eat the plant, so it has a strong advantage in fields and paddocks.  Heck, even our goats didn’t eat them.  Oddly, however, if you look it up, humans can eat the seed pods.  Somehow, I’m not interested in trying them.

A friend with the same plant in her yard told me I had to keep up with it and pull it and pull it and pull it some more.  I focused on the horse pens in the last couple years, and there are fewer struggling plants in there now.  But I didn’t focus on the chicken pen, or the yard.  Apparently chickens do not eat buttonweed either.  I even tried Round-up on the plants once, and I hate herbicides.  It briefly wilted the leaves, then the plants bounced back as robust as ever.    

This year I had old growth and second growth patches of the nasty weed in my yard.  In the chicken pen where we dump the compost, it grew to knee-high, and the branches were strong as rope and created a tripping hazard.  With this year’s wet spring the patches have outcompeted the grass in many areas of the yard.  It was a monoculture of flowering buttonweed.  I was overwhelmed, with seed pods and flowers everywhere. Dried out pods, green pods, about to pop pods.  Finally, I could no longer avoid weeding it. 

I decided I needed to follow good weed management practices, by not just pulling and leaving the plant on the ground to hopefully die as I usually do.  I needed to pull up not only each plant, but also to destroy the seeds.  If it wasn’t so dry, I would burn them.  I have placed some of the plants in deep buckets of water.  This is a technique where you let noxious weeds rot while submersed in water.  You know the process is complete when your bucket of rotten weeds smells like a dead animal and the neighbors start to complain. Then, theoretically, you can use the putrid smelling weed water to fertilize lawns and gardens, and in the process make your whole yard smell like a dead animal.  Even with this fine and sustainable technique, we had way more weeds than available buckets.  Who knew there was so much biomass in old-growth buttonweed?

We then used plastic feedbags and dog food bags to stuff full of buttonweed.  I worked at weeding for two days with short-bursts of weeding time.  I ran out of available bags before running out of weeds and had to beg for more feedbags from my neighbor.  Currently I have six bags full, and I’m not sure what we will do with the bags of weeds, since they will overwhelm our garbage can.  Maybe I’ll let the weeds and seeds dry out, and burn them with the pinecones this fall, when it’s finally safe to burn.  Maybe I’ll try filling the bags with water to make some more stinky rotting fertilizer water.  Maybe bit by bit and bag by bag I’ll find room in the garbage can.

For now, I’ve caught up on the backlog of buttonweed pulling.  But I know they will re-appear in the spring and wouldn’t be surprised if they start sprouting again this winter.  They are that kind of grudge-holding plant.   I imagine the seeds are long-lived, and I’m sure that the bits of the taproot that didn’t pull out will come back to life, like little zombie plants.   I’m sure next year I won’t let them get so out of control.  Oh, cripes and criminy, I forgot about the weeds in the chicken pen.   They are so tall that the chickens get lost in the buttonweed jungle.  Plus, I’m out of feedbags again.   And my hands are aching from pulling up the plants.  Oh well.  The sun is shining, the weather has cooled, and the seed pods are bursting.  Time to pull some more.  

Dowsing:  the search for underground water or minerals by observing the motion of a pointer, supposedly in response to unseen influences (Oxford English Dictionary). 

My mother’s uncle could do it.  My mother can do it.  I can do it sometimes.  Water dowsing, or water witching, runs in the family.   My mom uses a forked willow branch.  The tip drops when she is over water.  I use two L-shaped wires bent out of coat hangers.  The wires cross, or separate, when I walk over underground water pipes or electric pipes.  In my yard where I have experimented, the electric lines run near the water lines so I’m not always sure what my divining rods are showing me. 

I have heard of dowsers that can tell you where on the property to dig the well, and how deep the water will be.  They use a formula for how many times the rod dips at the end to calculate the depth.   Actually, I imagine one can estimate well depth pretty well by reviewing data on the wells in the neighborhood but dowsing the best location could be useful.  I wonder how many wells actually come up empty, with dowsing versus no dowsing?  Personally, even though the dowsing rods move for me, I have no idea how they work.  I have a pet theory though… electric wires, and running water are really a bunch of moving electrons with charges.  I believe the divining rods (wires in my case) are lining up with subtle electric or magnetic fields.  Like metal shavings above a magnet will align to the magnetic field.  However, when I read a book about dowsing (The Divining Rod by Barrett and Besterman), the authors disputed the magnetic theory, based on old experiments with dowsers on insulated versus uninsulated surfaces.  They also concluded that because divining rods can be wood, or metal, or other substances that are not influenced by magnets or charges, that the theory is not supported.    

Am I biased and making the rods move unconsciously? That’s what my son says.  But I had one set of divining rods that are in a metal sleeve.  It would be much harder for my unconscious muscle contractions to move them, and they still moved when I crossed a pipe.  Or at least they did move, until I lost one of those special rods.   I like that I can dowse, but I have only ever used it for fun and interest’s sake.  I have never had to dig a well, so I’m not sure how successful I would be on that task. 

We dowsers also can use pendulums to answer questions.  My mom has explored that, using a needle hanging on a thread as the pendulum.  You ask a question, and the needle moves left and right, or back and forth, or in a circle.  I would have to read a different book to remember which movement is supposed to be yes, no, or unknown.  When I try a pendulum, it does move decisively.  But is it real?  I don’t know.  My mom’s generation, and her mom’s generation would use the needle on a thread over a pregnant woman’s belly to determine whether she will have a boy or a girl.  Now we have ultrasound. You could probably develop a pretty good pendulum prediction experiment using ultrasound as the proof.  All you need is a whole bunch of friends that are pregnant and willing to share the data with you.  I have no pregnant friends at this time.   There goes that experiment.     

Are people still dowsing these days?  I asked the giant orb in the sky (Google).  There was one website for a guy explaining that Christ called him to dowse water.  That reminded me of a friend of mine who said she had dowsing ability but didn’t use it because she thought it was un-Christian.   Perhaps because of the “witching” name.   Another Google result showed a local well drilling company that says they will recommend water-witchers if you want, but generally if you simply dig deep enough you will find water around here.  They also stated that, more rarely, sometimes both witchers and well drillers get skunked.   As I dig a little deeper into the depths of the subject, I find many stories that say witching is not scientifically explained, it’s unproven, and no one tells the stories of when it fails.    

Back to the dowsing book.  I skimmed it; it was extremely wordy.  It discussed the history (going back to medieval times) and summarized some experiments that seemed to indicate water dowsing works.  The book was published in 1968 but was based mainly on earlier studies and information from the late 1800s and early 1900s.   After using the book illustrations to refresh myself on how to hold the rods, I went outside with a forked willow stick, and with my bent wire coat hangers.  I recognize that I have a bias when I dowse in my yard.  I know where most of the water pipes and electric lines are.  Nonetheless when I tried dowsing with both implements across known water and electric lines nothing happened.  I failed.

The book also described how some dowsers can find missing objects, or minerals such as silver and gold.  I had lost a small key to my camper a couple months prior.  I assumed the keys were lost out in the yard where my camper was parked.  As an experiment, I “introduced” my dowsing rods to my other camper key by touching the key with the rod.  Then I visualized the key while gridding the side yard.  Nothing.  No response; my second fail.  Is this because the key was not silver or gold?  Is this because the key was not lost in the area I gridded?  Or is this because dowsing for objects is a crock? 

After two failed dowsing trials on the same day, I thought I had lost my dowsing talent.  I was bummed.   Then I invited my mom, my son, and his girlfriend out into the yard to try dowsing.  My mom got some bobbles out of the forked willow stick, near some known water pipelines.  I tried it again and also got some responses with the willow rod tipping down.  Maybe my mom needed to charge it or something?

Then I started getting reactions with the wire rods, where I hadn’t earlier in the day.  Maybe I needed to be in the right frame of mind?  Meanwhile, my son showed us how he could move the willow stick purposefully, yet subtly, showing how it could be manipulated.  His girlfriend did not get reactions from the willow or the wire.   So is dowsing real?  I don’t move the rods purposely, but perhaps there is something that happens unconsciously.   None of these tests count as well-planned experiments.

The dowsing book finally concluded that the movement of the rod comes from an unconscious muscular action, but it didn’t scientifically explain what causes the unconscious movement.  My son says dowsing has clearly been debunked.  Perhaps.  I’ll have to dig deeper into the literature, and especially look for more recent literature.  In the meantime, I still haven’t found my lost camper key.  Maybe I should pull out my pendulum and ask it a bunch of yes/no questions to determine where the keys were lost.   I’m sure that will work, and I will successfully find the key.   Hey, if that does work, maybe I can use that process to find the missing dowsing rod with the metal sleave!  Or better yet, I can ask the giant orb in the sky to find me a new set of sleaved metal dowsing rods to purchase.  Maybe we don’t need dowsing now that we have the internet.  Heck, I’ll bet I can find a replacement camper key, too!  That type of search will work for sure.