Luna and Me

I'm not a car person.

But, allow me some sentimentalism: this month marks the 10-year anniversary of my obtaining Luna Moonshine, the '99 periwinkle-colored VW Passat that's been the only car I've ever owned. And, several days ago, I finally said goodbye and put her to rest in the hands of a VW shop here in Colorado.

Over our shared decade, we traveled roughly 100,000 miles together. She moved with me from Kansas to Ohio to Washington to Colorado. She road-tripped with me to Chicago (twice!), to Massachusetts to visit my good friend Becs and experience Trader Joe's for the first time, to New Orleans for three weeks of hurricane relief work after Katrina, to Kentucky for my very first backpacking trip, to the depths of the Cascadian jungle in western Washington for many a banjo jam session by the river.

She died a few times, including once at the end of a 20-mile gravel road in the woods, after which she had to be hauled out of by Cambajamba's jeep and a four-foot tow rope. She suffered sub-freezing nights in Ohio, rain storms in Seattle, snow storms in western Colorado. She was only ever in one accident. On one of the rare occasions I permitted someone else to drive her (those who know me know I was always protective of Luna), she was rear-ended on a highway exit ramp and had to have her bumper replaced.

In her final years, she cost me a fortune in repairs, not to mention in taking only premium gas for a decade; I'd be lying if I said I wasn't happy to be washing my hands of VWs and hopping on the Toyota bandwagon. But, that won't stop me from making an overly sentimental post here on my blog about our many good years together.

The Kansas days. Christine and Pat and I pack for our first road trip--to Chicago, for Lollapalooza, to see Weezer and Death Cab for Cutie and other high-school favorites. Luna was bumper-sticker galore back then, including but not limited to cliches such as: ART NOT APATHY; Compassion is Revolution; SAVE THE DRAMA FOR YO MAMA; People are Miracles; Every breath is a gift; ENJOY LIFE THIS IS NOT A DRESS REHEARSAL.

My first backpacking trip, in Mammoth Cave National Park, with Sahale, Ezra, Erika and Shari. It rained for 40 hours straight. Magical as the trip was, we cut a planned five-day trek short after three days and I was grateful to Luna for putting the "car" in "car camping" that night. As in, I slept in her front seat that night.

Piling into Luna in New Orleans with Ruth, Anna, Daniel and Adam after a long day of gutting houses.

My commute through northeast Ohio farm country from Oberlin to Elyria for my job at Dick's Sporting Goods--the first job to send me down a running/outdoors-related career path, and also introduce me to some incredible friends outside of the "Oberlin bubble."

Sunset over I-90 in Washington state, the night I arrived in Seattle after a 2000 mile drive from Kansas, and a few days' stopover in Glacier National Park to visit Shari and hike the heck out of some beautiful Montana trails. Real world, adult livin', here I come.

Cruising the streets of my new hometown the next day. Seyeon took this picture from my backseat, because my front seat was still full of moving boxes.

One of my first travel-writing gigs, with OutdoorsNW magazine--road-tripping to Oregon's Willamette Valley to ride my bike, go wine-tasting and write about it for the magazine! Thanks to Carolyn for entrusting me with the assignment.

Luna pretending to be a 4WD mountain car, playing chauffeur to my annual Christmas-in-Seattle tradition with Elodie and James--snowshoeing! In the Seattle years, post accident-and-bumper-replacement, Luna sports new hippie bumper stickers, including but not limited to: Run Happy; Namaste; I {heart} New Orleans; 50k Vashon Ultra.

The neighborhood cats in Seattle loved Luna.

Other creatures have also enjoyed sleeping on, or in, Luna. She played chauffeur to the most magical road trip of all time, out to the Methow Valley for the Angel's Staircase 25K with Tom and Elodie. (Flatlanders running straight up an 8000-foot mountain elicits midday car naps.)

Luna also earned me my favorite parking ticket, featuring the best butchering of my name EVER. I've seen Yikta, Yata, Yakita, Yita, Yika, Yikita ... but this. This was a whole new level.

Luna survives a long, cold, grueling drive from Seattle to Colorado at the beginning of this year for my new gig with Trail Runner.

My mom (visiting from Holland earlier this month!) and I saying goodbye to Luna in the VW lot here in Colorado where we left her.

RIP Luna. Thank you for 10 years of awesome!

Life: The Outtakes Reel

Photo by David Clifford

This week, as I was reviewing photos from my recent "work" trip to run trails in Iceland and write about them, I couldn't help but think, Damn, my life is freaking awesome.

... a sentiment which was immediately swallowed by my ongoing fear that I was once again contributing to that everyone-else's-life-looks-better-on-the-surface phenomenon that I feel, more and more, I want to devote my creative energies to squashing.

Truth be told, following an admittedly amazing week in Iceland (which was on top of an equally amazing long weekend in the Pacific Northwest for the wedding of my wonderful friends, Kate and Jeff), this week, my heart has been heavy. A number of people in my life, both dear friends/family as well as several close acquaintances, have been grappling with tremendous personal challenges, including, but not limited to: cancer, depression, divorce, unsatisfying marriages, corporate layoffs and other assorted rejections.

Thinking about these people I love and care about so deeply has made it difficult to concentrate on the regular, day-to-day aspects of my life. I hate feeling helpless. The ongoing question, for me, seems to be: can I somehow help people feel less alone in their struggles? I've had so many people hold my hand through the darkest periods of my own life in the past; I want to pay that forward. We all deserve to feel as though we are not alone in chugging through this life.

Perhaps it's the only child in me, but there's something especially terrifying to me about the concept of alone-ness. Not solitude, which I consider something different entirely—a proactive choice to spend quality time with oneself—but the case of having alone-ness cast over you, like a cloak. Isolation, alienation. Feeling a lack of connection to others in the world.

With all this in mind, I think I'm finally ready to share a blog post I wrote seven months ago, immediately after I accepted the job as Associate Editor at Trail Runner, but have left hiding in my drafts folder ever since (and, at the time, spun into this one instead ... )

See, one of the things I've felt sad about this week is some "restructuring" at REI's headquarters, through which several friends have lost their jobs, some of whom have been with the company for decades. Despite the fact that I never officially transcended my role as a temporary employee at REI Corporate, I felt very much a part of the family there. So, my heart hurts for them.

On the other hand, in many ways, I feel a lot of hope for those who will be leaving the company, willfully or not. Change, when thrust upon us, is never easy—yet it nearly always leads to growth, to some recognition that, in the long run, the change was for the better. I spent a year and a half trying very hard to earn a permanent spot at REI Corporate, certain that being a copywriter there was my ultimate dream job. Maybe, if I'd gotten it, it would have been. But sometimes it's easy to get so wrapped up in the immediacy of our own lives that we fail to recall the big picture of what it is that will really make our souls sing. Not ever being offered a permanent copywriting job for REI is probably the best thing that's happened to me ... after all, I wouldn't have been getting paid to run around waterfalls in Iceland last week if REI Corporate had ever made me a permanent employee.

So, in my effort to remind my friends that change, loss, and not getting what you hoped for can actually turn out to be amazing in its own way ... here's the unpublished blog post from seven months ago:

---

While I've had a number of really fabulous opportunities come my way over the past few years, there have been many disappointments and heartbreaks along the way, too. Today, I feel like writing about my behind-the-scenes, my outtakes reel, if you will, along my convoluted path to my dream gig.

Before I went to college, I had some illusions about becoming a published novelist upon graduating with my creative writing degree. Then, toward the end of my time at Oberlin, I got it in my head to apply for the Watson Fellowship—a $25,000 grant to travel the world for a year and focus my energy on a single project. My project proposal was to travel to Malaysia, Tanzania, Malawi, South Africa, and Suriname, and look at the intersection of long-distance running and humanitarian projects. I wanted to be inspired by the amazing ways that people have used the simple act of running to accomplish so many things—to spread joy, to supply neighborhoods in need with shoes and other resources, to empower women and kids throughout the world, to raise money for villages and schools and water wells, to bring disparate communities together—and I wanted to write about those efforts, as well as develop the skill set within myself to launch my own running-based, global nonprofit.

But alas, I bombed my interview with the fellowship committee at Oberlin. I was rejected at the first level of evaluation all Watson proposals undergo. It crushed me.

By the time I graduated, I'd adjusted my ambitions to what seemed like more practical pursuits: getting involved in the publishing industry, copywriting for a marketing team, or possibly working in corporate communications.

But even those jobs were hard to come by, in the midst of a difficult economy. My liberal arts degree  spun me into a poet, but left out the bill-paying kinds of skills that most of us need to survive in the big, bad "Real World."

So I chiseled away even more at my dream, began applying feverishly for jobs that I only sort of wanted, in any part of the country I could even vaguely see myself living. Still living in rural Ohio at the time, uncertain I had the money to move to a new place without securing a job first, I felt scared, and increasingly desperate.

Reed College, in Portland, interviewed me for a job in their admissions office. They turned me down.

When I applied for a one-year communications fellowship position with the Oberlin Office of Communications, I didn't get offered an interview.

YES! Magazine wouldn't even entertain my application for an assistant editor position.

Brooks Running didn't want me.

A marketing agency called Merkle interviewed me for an editing job and I never heard from them again. There's nothing worse than getting rejected from a crappy entry-level job with a marketing firm that's light years away from your true passion. But, that happened. A few times.

Heck, I couldn't even get Road Runner Sports to talk to me about a $10/hour "Running Specialist" job hawking shoes.

I was spiraling to the bottom of my dream funnel.

The day Reed rejected me for the admissions job, I hit a pretty bad low. So I took a step back and asked myself, "If I could have any job in the world right now, what would it be?"

... and found that my answer, at that time, was, Writing and editing for an outdoorsy magazine in Seattle. So I decided two things: One, I was going to move to Seattle, no matter what. Two, I was going to reach out to Carolyn, the editor of a magazine called Outdoors NW that I knew was published in Seattle. Their website didn't even have a section for jobs or employment, but I figured I could learn a thing or two from someone who'd been in a pioneer in the world of outdoors journalism for decades.

The next day, my dream funnel began opening back up: Carolyn wrote me back and offered to meet me for coffee and chat. (I hadn't even moved to Seattle yet!) When I did finally move and meet up with Carolyn, we hit it off instantly, and she gave me my first freelance writing assignment, putting together some book reviews. So began my own fledgling career in outdoors journalism.

(One more "rejection" worth noting: I wrote to the magazine Northwest Runner around the same time. They never responded to my email.)

Small successes began building: 24 Hour Fitness hired me as a front-desk minion (which I quit after one week with that horrible company.) REI hired me to work part-time, seasonally, in their flagship Seattle store as a sales specialist in the footwear department. Outdoors NW magazine eventually brought me on as an assistant editor. I made it through an "audition" with Kaplan Test Prep to work as a private SAT tutor for high school kids in the Seattle area, and survived four weeks of intimidating tutor training, designed to weed out anyone who was too nervous or insecure. I couldn't sleep at night for a whole month, I was so terrified of failing ... but I made it.

Yet, the stumbling blocks were far from over. The next year, I landed the temporary copywriting gig at REI, but was sent back to work retail at the store when the team's freelance budget for the year ran out ... invited back to the corporate offices at the beginning of the following year, but nevertheless strung along as a temp for another full year.

I applied for a digital content manager position with the Washington Trails Association, my favorite nonprofit in the Northwest—and though I was fortunate enough to be one of only a few people interviewed out of the nearly 100 who applied, ultimately they went with someone else as well (though, notably, offered the nicest rejection ever, which left me feeling warm and fuzzy about the whole experience, and equipped with honest, helpful feedback on why they'd gone with another candidate.)

But it still hurt. I can't tell you how many times that week I reread the words of Max Ehrmann from his 1927 Desiderata poem: "Whether or not it is clear to you, the universe is unfolding as it should."

Fast forward a year, and after all that, I've finally landed the gig I always wanted in the first place.

Career musings in my personal journal, circa 2011

The experience of failure, by the way, does not go away with earning a job title. This week, even with the best intentions, I managed to do a disservice to an amazing athlete by writing a headline that felt too much like a "bait and switch" to several disgruntled readers (including several folks in the greater trail-running community whom I've long looked up to), who didn't waste a moment letting me know in the comments section they thought my headline was lame.

One stroke of acceptance does not insulate us from criticism. But, with criticism come lessons, and with lessons comes growth. At least that's what I keep telling myself, anyway ... :)

Ehrmann's poem concludes: "With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy."

Watching sunrise from the summit of Mt. Sopris (12,966 feet) this week

Sayonara, Sallie Mae - and other exercises in gratitude

Despite making gratitude one of my projects for 2012, I missed writing a Thanksgiving blog entry this year. Not intentionally...just was busy, I suppose, making the most of a holiday spent in sunny southern California. There were beaches to run barefoot on, trails in the Santa Monica mountains to climb, copious amounts of food to be enjoyed. Life is good.

This year, I have so much to be grateful for - good health, an able body, amazing people in my life, a lovely place to call home, many powerful communities that I feel fortunate to be a part of, a career in which I continue to learn new things every day, a great boss, awesome coworkers who are tolerant of my quirkiness - including, but not limited to, my desktop terrarium (thank you, Camba!), oversized headphones, mason jars with green smoothies, and a propensity for running long distances.

Lest I allow my blog to sugarcoat my moods, though, I must confess: I've been seriously crabby and down the last few days. It's probably part catching a cold, part not running enough, and part life miscellany. So, on a sidenote, a special thank you to those who've had to put up with that...you know who you are. Thank you.

In no particular order, I am also grateful for: dark chocolate, endorphins, train travel, cousins, persimmons, Spotify, donation-based yoga classes, the Seattle Public Library, my juicer, Skype, earl grey tea, down jackets, and the fact that my freezer is broken so I have an excuse to eat all the ice cream I just bought.

And tonight, a very special shoutout to my parents - to whom, as always, I pretty much feel I owe the world.

This week, I paid off the remaining balance on all my student loans. Since I spent my last dime moving myself out to Seattle three and a half years ago, I have been slowly socking away money to work toward this goal. Now that it's a reality, I have this to say to my parents:

(More thank you notes to my parents here.)

Indeed, there is much to be grateful for. As always, choosing to focus on gratitude makes even a long, stressful, exhausting day a good one. Amazing how that works :)

Running Meets Politics: 300 mile foot races vs. changing the world

When I was at Oberlin, I got to attend free speeches, lectures, and performances by famous people all the time. (Toni Morrison, Michael Pollan, Newt Gingrich, Jerry Springer,etc...) Once you're no longer paying great sums annually into the system, however, there are fewer "free" perks. However, every now and then, I still luck out.

This week at REI, we had our annual all-store meeting. Some ambitious soul recruited world-famous ultramarathoner Dean Karnazes to speak at it. Again, I realize that for most people, "famous runner" is sort of an oxymoron, and the vast majority of you won't even recognize the name. (I know Natalie will, though! What Would Ultramarathon Man Do?) However, a short list of Dean's accolades: Ran 350 miles nonstop without rest or sleep, Ran 50 marathons in 50 states on 50 consecutive days, Ran a marathon at the South Pole in -40 degrees F, Voted one of Outside Magazine's Ultimate Top 10 Outdoor Athletes, Voted one of the GQ's Best Bodies of the Year in 2004, Winner of the 2004 Badwater Ultramathon (135 miles through Death Valley in the middle of July), etc etc etc.


He's been called "The Perfect Human."
The gist of his motivational speech to all of us was that what he does isn't so miraculous after all; it's just a matter of yearning to test his own limits.

Whenever I go for more than a few weeks or months without running a lot, I forget how much I love it. I forget how good it makes me feel, how simple it makes the world seem, and how much my mind and body alike appreciate me for treating them. I forget the surge of creative energy and flow that comes when I run, and I forget the natural high I get, and I forget, most of all, what a perfect metaphor running is for everything in life.

I've always said that I could probably be a fiscal conservative, under one condition: that how hard one works actually corresponds with how much money one makes. (A terribly gross oversimplification of my political beliefs and interpretation of the world, but allow it to suffice for now.) In such a "perfect world", it's easy to get behind the idea of straightforward economic incentives to motivate people to contribute to society, in whatever way they best can.

On a tangential but related note, my favorite quote find of the week, on the Facebook profile of a Seattle ultrarunner I met briefly at my Vashon Island run..."Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive." - Howard Thurman.

Anyway. Distance running is that "perfect world." Dean summed it up yesterday when he gave his tongue-in-cheek demonstration in response to the question "How do you run 300 miles without stopping?" He sort of did a little jog across the room in front of all of us and said, "That's pretty much it. Except instead of stopping, you just keep doing it until you've gone 300 miles."


Me smiling at the end of my first ultra!
In the world of distance running, anyone can excel. It doesn't matter if you're big, small, long-legged, short-legged, old, young, male, female, have a high V02 max or not, whatever...you see 55-year-old women kicking 25-year-old men's butts at ultramarathons. The only things that matter are: how hard you trained, how well you fueled your body, and how hard you pushed yourself mentally during the race. Sure, injuries and weather and other minor unpredictables can happen and throw you off course, but for the most part, there is a direct correlation between how hard you work and how successful you are. The playing ground is level, how much time you're willing to devote to make yourself great corresponds with how far you're able to go, and ultimately, anyone can win.

I'm finding myself more and more confused about how close or far our American society, as it stands right now, is from mirroring that world of "anyone can win." How level is the playing field? So many important people in my life, all whose opinions I value and trust, have completely different answers to that question. How much more level is the playing ground than fifty years ago? How much more level should it be? And how do we get there?

Big questions without easy answers. As opposed to...Q: "How do I get better at running?" A: "Run more."

I wish the world were like running: simple and easy to navigate. The path to running success is long, but at least it's clear cut. The path to other goals is so much trickier to identify and get started on. Seyeon, for example, wants to design and implement an entirely new school system for adolescents. I want to be a better asset to this world and use my words to help people feel more connected and understood, less isolated and hopeless. America wants to stay true to its founding ideals and ensure every one of its citizens is given the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Where do you even start with such goals? If you want to run a marathon, the first step is a literal one; you pick yourself up off the couch and put one foot in front of the other. And you keep going. I sure wish I could figure out the first step on all the other things I'd like to change about our world...

Unearthing secret geekdoms

I guess the last word of my last blog entry wasn't entirely accurate.

I'm having that feeling now where I'm so behind on my blog - too many stories that need telling, too many thoughts that need sharing, too many musings that need processing - that I've no idea where to begin.

As with my personal journal, there's always the conflict between wanting to relay tangible events in my life for the purposes of chronicling and memory preservation and urgency to somehow render my experiences permanent, less ephemeral than they really are - and the desire to just elaborate indulgently on all the crazy thoughts and ideas that have been spinning around in my head lately. I always tend toward the latter.

But for the sake of posterity, the tangibles include: being 4 weeks into school now...Alan and his daughter Kristin being in town for a week and a half of Seattle sight-seeing, great meals and many trips to Old School Frozen Custard, cozy evenings of cooking and board game-playing and movie-watching...road-tripping to Leavenworth for Oktoberfest...pumpkin-carving parties and art parties and fancy schmancy wine and cheese parties with good friends...the increasingly regular Seyeon-and-Yitka get-togethers of frenzied TED-talk, UTNE Reader, and book sharing...Cam and Avey's gorgeous wedding in beautiful, wild Washington...multiple visits to Seattle's homegrown chocolate factory, Theo Chocolate. The list goes on and on; it's been a gorgeous month here, of sunshine and stunning colors and crisp autumn air and wonderful adventure.


As for the intangibles? I can't even believe how much my life has felt lately like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces flying into place at light speed. I'm sure there's a better, less hackneyed metaphor out there for what I've been feeling lately, but the puzzle one really tells it like it is.

Here's the deal: I can't imagine myself having majored in anything but creative writing at Oberlin. Creative writing was the reason I ever even looked at Oberlin in the first place. I met "my people" in the creative writing department. I unearthed a love for creative nonfiction there. Nothing, absolutely nothing, sets me on fire the way putting words on paper does.


But.

My grammar and vocabulary and storytelling geekdom is not my only geekdom. I'm a geek about other things, too: hex codes, acronyms like XHTML and PHP and MySQL, obscure keyboard shortcuts, feeling a warm affinity for people who recognize "& n b s p ;" as a meaningful combinations of characters.

Now, not only do I readily point out shoes and grammatical examples in every day life to people who could care less (e.g. "Hey random stranger, how do you like those Salomon XA Pro 3D's on your feet?", or "Damn you, grocery store, it's 10 Items or FEWER, not less!"), I've also begun pointing out typefaces to my poor unsuspecting friends and loved ones. (e.g. "That pilates studio is branded with Helvetica Neue Light...nice.") Thank you, Typography class. Bored, finally, of keeping a daily Subaru sighting count in Seattle, I've started tracking Papyrus sightings on business signs and posters instead. Atrocious...

I guess I'd just forgotten how unbelievably fired up geeking out about tech stuff gets me - and how being in school for an IT field now makes me feel like so many threads in my life are all coming together in big, exciting ways.


Seamless connections between disparate aspects of my life crop up everywhere:

In my how-to-be-a-webmaster/web designer/web programmer/content manager/project manager/freelance business owner class (not its official name, of course, but that pretty well sums it up), my teacher Mike shows us a website he designed for David Lemley - the man behind major corporate rebranding projects for Starbucks, Home Depot, and...REI. I read about his work, fascinated by the driving forces behind this company I work for and admire that's succeeded in maintaining a pretty darn loyal, happy base of employees. How? Rebranding efforts a few years ago.

I have some rebranding(ish) ideas for Outdoors NW, even though it's on a completely different level. Yet truly, the skills I'm garnering in school, week by week, I get to turn around and apply immediately in my creative work for the magazine. As well as in building an art portfolio website for my friend Jenica. Jenica hosted an art party several weeks ago in a big art space basement studio on Capitol Hill. When I got to the party, I found none other than Oberlin's semi-famed Kalan Sherrard chopping vegetables in the kitchen, talking about Oberlin-nostalgia-friendly topics, but with a Seattle touch: dumpster diving at Pike Place Market, doing puppet shows and performance art on the streets of Capitol Hill...


See how it works? Web design -> REI -> Outdoors NW -> Seattle -> Oberlin -> Creative writing -> Web design...Full circle; small world.

My friend Tom (originally met at REI) recommended to me the blog zenhabits.net several weeks ago. I didn't make the connection then, but the author of it, Leo Babauta, has written "The Power of Less" - a book for which I'd just put a special order request in with the King County library system, independent of Tom's recommendation to me. Got the book last week, plowed through half of it, called Seyeon to rave about it to her. Turns out she'd put a special order request for the exact same book from the Seattle Public library system, and was in the middle of reading it when I called.

Seattle's an awesome city. It's an unbelievable hot bed of amazing energy and creativity and inspiration. Every time I stumble across another blog or website or book that completely changes the way I look at the world, I swear, 90% of the time, the author is either from Seattle or lives here now. So many incredible people here with big ideas living out big lives...I want to be a part of it all. Life doesn't feel long enough.


That's probably one of the top ten best problems in the world to feel like you have, though.

Thoughts on a rainy Friday

Changed my blog layout, as some of you non-RSS -feed readers may have noticed. Just needed a change of scenery, I suppose.

That's what autumn is all about anyway, right? Shifting seasons, changing colors, falling leaves, a new year beginning for the schoolbound, that cyclical creep of cool, crisp September air nosing its way into August heat. For Seattle, it's just meant a lot of rain the last few days. I keep thinking about Ruth, who just moved here a few weeks ago from New York, and how she must be calling home and telling everyone, "It's really true, this gray and rainy all the time business about Seattle!"

For now, though, I like it. Rain means books, fleece, butternut squash soup, music, snuggling with Chloe, Cozy Time socks, copious amounts of tea, and snowboarding season just around the corner. I guess that's how I know I moved to the right city...I can take my place among my Seattle friends whose Facebook statuses all echo my sentiments: James "likes that it's overcast today" and Gale wrote, "has anyone looked outside? Exquisite rain. Really. Top notch Seattle rain. I love it.", etc. Clearly I am in the right place. I was listening to some great music a minute ago, but I've turned it off, because I'd rather sit by my open window and just listen to the droplets splattering in the gutters. What a great sound!

Life's been interesting lately. I've read more books in the past month than I think I have in all my time since graduating. A bittersweet observation...completely awesome and tragic, all at once. Why did it take me until now to remember how much I love reading? How much richer my life feels when it's surrounded by words - real, thoughtfully crafted, deliberately transposed words - and not just Twitter posts? For once, I haven't held myself to one or two books at a time. I've checked out dozens from the library, spent afternoons lost in bookstores, placed exorbitant orders with Amazon (no, I don't think they're evil, just because they're an online retailer), and woken up every morning surrounded by books and let myself take to work the one or two that really appealed to me on that particular day - rather than holding myself to the one, necessarily, I was reading the night before. It's been fantastic.

I went for my first run in 6 weeks. I did about 3.5 miles, and it felt spectacular, but also hard (though not as hard as I was worried it might be.) But I was ready to be done by the end. It's sad to not be in the kind of running shape I was in just a couple months ago, but my body feels strong and rejuvenated and excited for all the rebuilding and strengthening that's possible when you're not already in tip-top shape. The fact that "going for a run" only takes half an hour now instead of three or four is also very productive for the book-reading habit.

Got together with three lovely Oberlin folk a few nights ago for tacos and a political discussion on the pros and cons of Katy Perry and her effect on American pop culture. Ah Oberlin...it's amazing how many fellow alumni have settled in the rainy city, too.

School starts in another week and a half. I'm excited for all the possibilities. And again, for change. Change is great. It's always been a positive driving force in my life. I've had so many ideas in the last few years, but with the modern technological age, it feels like a roadblock to not have the skills to build websites for my ideas. School will (hopefully) help me develop those skills, and for that, I'm infinitely grateful.

My eclectic soundtrack for the month:
Goodbye, Sean Fournier (his whole album if obtainable free at his website)
Jolene, Dolly Parton
Turns Out You Won, Meredith Bragg
Seminole Wind, James Taylor
Otherside, Macklemore
Alla This, Ani Difranco
In the Barrel of a Gun, Emily Wells
Cornflake Girl, Tori Amos
When You Come Back Down, Nickel Creek
Ain't No Reason, Brett Dennen
Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

That's all I got for now, folks.

Round on the ends and high in the middle

Watching the silent flashing yellow lights at 3 a.m. on the streets of Oberlin.
I haven't written yet about my Ohio trip, I know. As with all vacations, it came and went in a whirlwind of experiences, thoughts, conversations, moments...I feel that the trip initiated some movement and change within me, which is always productive - but writing about it in retrospect, it's difficult to capture it all. When I went to Seattle for the first time five years ago, my journal entry about it was just a mess of details. I wrote, Chai lattes, acoustic guitar on sidewalks, sketchbooks, flying fish, postmenopausal hippies, Thai food and mango bubble tea, walking everywhere, anarchy bookstores, no internet, browsing zines, pink hair, Ramen by coffeemaker, art and more art, running up 25 flights of stairs, falling asleep on windowsills, rain, thrift-store explorations, pigeons, local poets and magic tricks, the boy at Seattle's Best Coffee who thinks my name is Francesca, the drunken Scot with a lip ring who followed us around for a bit...

This trip to Ohio? Even though I saw a plethora of friends and had a zillion thoughts about myself, my past, my life path, necessary changes for the sake of my sanity...my journal's seen little of it, my blog, obviously, has seen none at all so far, and my camera only has a few sparse pictures, mostly of silly things that have nothing to do with what this trip was really about for me.

What I did get to do: Truly sleep in, on more than one occasion! See a ton of friends and acquaintances alike - Oberlin kids, Elyria kids, old professors and bosses... Have a silly night out at the Joyful Mug, and in celebration of the good ol' Midwestern cost of living, buy a round of drinks for my old co-workers. Run 13 miles at French Creek. Eat at all my old favorite Oberlin restaurants (including the Feve twice in one day...yesss.) Hang out on a lot of Oberlin porches. See the new Creative Writing House, the stunning new jazz studies building, the new bagel place in town, the new green East College developments and Oberlin's first true coffeeshop, Slow Train. Listen to Julie Taymor's commencement speech (On a scale of 10, I'd give it a 6.5, but it sure beat the heck out of Richard Haass' speech at my graduation.) Stand on a folding chair and scream my head off as graduating friends' names were called. Enjoy Giovanni's pizza and watch a stunning sunset over the lake with Alan at my side. Sit out a lovely afternoon thunderstorm underneath the Mudd library ramp. Nap in the sunshine in Tappan. Drop by the Dick's store in Elyria and have lunch with Quinn. Spend a lazy afternoon in the backyard shade with (some of) Alan's family. Walk down the middle of the road at night by myself under a full (ish) moon and listen to the crickets.

What I didn't get to do: Go to Cedar Point. Have a beer at Stubby's. Belt out a duet at Loco karaoke with Aseem. Splash around in the Arb lakes. Spend any time in Cleveland whatsoever. See Quinn perform. Ride bikes on the old rail trail. Read in any of the three books I hauled with me.

But that's all right. There will always be next time. Until then... photo album!


Iconic Oberlin photo.


Ruth*, with our delightful $4.50 plate of nachos on Agave's new sidewalk terrace.
*who will be moving to Seattle in September!


Feve burger and tots. Mmm...indeed, most of the pictures I took on this trip involved food one way or another.


The ridiculously slick new jazz studies building.


Hint hint, Seattle. See? The Midwest knows how to a Happy Hour right.


CLE Airport. Oh Cleveland...

Mini Cup o' Joe report!


Cappucino, Slow Train Coffee. This place, though not perfect, beats the pants off of JavaZone.


Slow Train Coffee interior.


The strange thing about returning to any place that was once home is that it's generally about as you left it...yet you no longer occupy the same role there. You don't have a place to call your own, nor a routine to claim - but rather, you piece together an itinerary for yourself out of familiar elements in hopes of reliving a glimpse of your past, but inevitably probably falling a bit short. The one day I made it to Black River for brunch, the coffee they gave me was bitter and lukewarm, and the sausage overcooked and hard as a rock. Go figure. The new coffeeshop, Slow Train, is awesome, but aptly named; it took nearly 15 minutes for them to handle a line of four people wanting espresso drinks. The day I ran at French Creek, it was hot as hell, with 90% humidity and mosquitoes everywhere, so it hardly felt like this blissful running spot I remembered it as...and I realize that Seattle's taught me to love running hills, of which, of course, Ohio has none.

But I suppose that the big guy in the sky is just looking out for me: if, this time around, Ohio felt like the cozy blanket it once did, it would have been hard to leave. And it wasn't. I felt I got what I needed out of it - seeing the important people, being nudged to reconnect with my biggest, original passion in this life (i.e. writing), having the time to breathe for what felt like the first time in months - and it's clear to me that since returning to Seattle, I've been in a much better, calmer, Zen-like state of mind than I have been in awhile. I was definitely in need of a vacation - but, I'm also happy to be back in my new home, where things are familiar and cozy and full of friends, decent coffee, spectacular baristas, hills aplenty, and fresh, cool mountain air.


I love checking out the patchwork farms from the plane window as much as the next person, but mountain peaks are cool, too.


Sigh. Isn't she lovely? I'm still in the honeymoon phase.

Greeted by the albino squirrel

Well, I've made it to Ohio. I can't get over how strange and absolutely surreal it is that a few hours ago, I was walking briskly through the streets of Seattle under a dusky darkening sky in order to catch my light rail to the airport...I promptly fell asleep at takeoff, and woke up at 10,000 feet to a stunning sunrise eclipsing the full moon.


And now it's morning in Oberlin, and I'm back in this place for the first time in nearly a year, and it feels very odd indeed.

A couple times throughout the flight, my eyes drifted open. I'd forgotten that the moon is (nearly?) full right now - so the view was unbelievably spectacular...the moonlight was so bright it reflected off the clouds we were flying above, lending them to a sort of golden-silhouetted look, and the whole dark blanket was punctuated with occasional holes into the glittering night-lit towns on the ground below. I love red eye flights.

In the interest of not disturbing my kind host too early in the morning, I have staked out a swinging bench in Tappan Square to listen to the birds and bask in the sunshine that's pouring through the trees and evaporating the morning dew on the grass. It's so much warmer here than it is in Seattle right now. The albino squirrels are here, as they've always been, and came out to greet me.


I'm warmed by the thought of the lazy days ahead I have here to lounge in this good Midwestern sunshine, indulge in the simultaneous relief to have moved on from this place and yet still mourn the loss of my past life in this state, and catch up on some general, much-needed self-reflection.

Impromptu rooftop concerts and urban sunsets

Overall, this has been a good past couple weeks of working hard, but maximizing my relaxation and enjoyment of the outdoors with the free time I do scrounge up.


Random Oberlin sighting of the week! Saw this window sticker as I was sitting in traffic passing through Wallingford over the weekend.
I went for a long run on Cougar Mountain today...it truly is a trail runner's paradise there...50+ miles of trails, ranging in difficulty level from flat stretches to steeper, more technical single-track routes, and all interspersed with intriguing landmarks like a giant clay pit, an old mine shaft, several small waterfalls, a glacial boulder called the "Fantastic Erratic", and an old anti-aircraft military base. I've run at Cougar several times before, but this was the first time I set out on my own with a trail map in palm, water and energy gels strapped to my back, and just took to the woods for hours of solo exploration. It was 70ish degrees and sunny, but the forest is highly dense in most places. I ran in and out of cool stretches, warm pockets of air, sunshine and shade alike. Great way to spend my day, though it thoroughly wiped me out. I napped away my afternoon.

Jess is moving back to North Carolina at the end of this month, but we spent last Friday afternoon wandering around the lovely neighborhood of Ballard. Alan and I went back the following day so I could buy (finally, Tom, finally!) a cute lunchbox for myself to encourage more creative, thoughtful lunches to take to work. (Yes, expect a lunchbox blog post in the near future.) We also stopped in a cozy outdoor beer garden in Ballard to soak up the afternoon sunshine and watch the beginning of the Sounders game amidst a sea of fellow futbol fans. Did I mention that I love this city?

Zoe came over from Bainbridge Island later that evening so we could hang out. I met her at the ferry landing and we went out for Thai food down by Pike Place Market before going to the Hard Rock Cafe to see a band that she'd seen at the Ballard Market perform: Luc and the Lovingtons. The Hard Rock Cafe is a new addition for Seattle, having just opened its doors in February. I'm no Hard Rock Cafe groupie, but in all truth, it was a sweet venue. In addition to showcasing dozens of dolled up high schoolers for their prom dinner on Saturday, it boasts a super-sweet rooftop terrace with a nice view of the market and the Sound. In exploring up there, a couple members of the band recognized Zoe ("You're Ballard Market Girl!!") and we all hung out on the roof until the show started. The show itself was spectacular; their album got reviewed by the Seattle Weekly in the same breath as the Blue Scholars' album...woohoo local music! They're a feel-good reggae/funk sort of band whose music is all about peace, love and happiness, with special interest on their album in post-Katrina New Orleans, Latin America, and Africa.

Oh! And Jason Mraz has covered their "Freedom song." Rad.

After they played, some guy gave them $500 in cash to continue playing on the rooftop around the "campfire." It worked for a while, until condo neighbors complained and Hard Rock's bouncers kicked us all off the roof...but all in all, it was a truly magical night.


Cell phone photo. Pardon the poor quality.
In other news about my friends whose names begin with the letter Z...Zanna's birthday was this week! She had a rockin evening picnic, complete with Lady Gaga (in Ipod format, not in the flesh, sadly), volleyball net, yummy Trophy cupcakes (which just broke a record!), watermelon, frisbees, and a lot of good company.


Good, silly times were had by all.
There were also some lovely sunsets this week. Here's one Alan and I managed to catch from atop the Mount Baker neighborhood - a totally under-appreciated part of Seattle on the southeast side with spectacular views that most people don't seem to know about.


Most Seattle skyline photos are taken from Queen Anne hill, where the Space Needle features prominently in the view of the skyline. It's in this picture, too, but so tucked away behind the buildings that it's barely even a speck.


+ the moon.
So, I'm feeling much calmer and balanced than I was awhile ago. Crazily enough, I'm still averaging anywhere from 40-50 hour work weeks, but somehow I feel like I'm just managing better. The extra sunlight hours are helping my energy levels a lot. Running regularly again helps. And vacation just around the corner is a big deal! Onward...

From Farm to Yitka's Kitchen

Homemade zucchini bread.
This week, something big is happening: I will have my first day off from work (all jobs considered) in TWENTY-SEVEN DAYS. I didn't actually realize how ridiculous my schedule had gotten until I sat down today to look at my iCal, and realized, holy cow...I've been swamped. I'm working full time at REI, tutoring four students, proctoring the occasional SAT at local high schools, cleaning Vera once a week (in exchange for free training sessions), and doing some writing here and there. Though not much blogging, apparently...

I'm pooped. It's exacerbated by the fact that I'm battling some severe bruising (Metatarsals? Bone bruise? Not quite sure...) on my right foot...I didn't even hurt it while running, but it's kept me sidelined from my passion for three weeks and counting now. Bummer. After writing an article on the Eugene Marathon, I registered for it this spring...but it's less than a month away now, and I'm pretty sure my injury's left me in no place to run it. Needless to say, the lack of running during this rather hectic stretch in my life has left me a little stir-crazy.

Nevertheless, I'm determined as ever to always carve out the requisite relaxation time. There definitely hasn't been enough of it lately, but I *have* done some nice bonus activities here and there. I finished reading Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal Vegetable Miracle", about her family's decision to live on a farm and eat only locally grown food for a whole year. It's a wonderful book - funny, enthralling, poetic, inspiring, poignant all - and one that's been on my reading list since Seyeon and I went down to Austin, Texas about a year and a half ago and I saw it on the bookshelf of the delightful folks from Couchsurfing.com with whom we stayed. That week in Austin was one of blissful vacation in the midst of the only time in my life that I've been even busier and more stressed out than I am now, in the middle of my final semester at Oberlin and 5K-race organization effort. The book went on my "Things I Want to Do/Read When I Have a Life Again" List.

So, having finally read it, I felt (as I'm sure most of its readers have/do/will) inspired to get more in touch with the world of local agriculture. It's kind of scary how out of touch the modern, industrial grocery store has made us with the very thing that sustains us in this world, let alone how much less flavorful and nutrient-rich our typical grocery store fare is today than it was years ago. And all the waste that's involved with shipping food halfway around the world just so we can eat strawberries in January...anyway. A great read that definitely reinforced my desire not only to build my food knowledge but also to work on honing my cooking skills. My first step was to sign up for a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) share: a box every other week of fresh, organic produce from a local farm.


My first box!
I did this for awhile with my housemates the summer I lived in Oberlin, but that was back when I was still intimidated by unfamiliar vegetables - so I feel like the CSA was of little use to me back then. But now I'm all about experimenting and learning in the kitchen, so the prospect of a box of new ingredients to explore - or just familiar ones that I don't go out of my way to buy at the grocery store. Like, in the case of this week...zucchini! Hence the tasty loaf at the top of this entry.


Bonus: Chloe gets a boat to play in after I've unloaded all the produce into my fridge.
Other triumphs in the past week:
- Alan bought his own truck, and thus will be able to be home much more often soon!
- I hosted a girls' night/dinner party a couple evenings ago...delightful.
- I bought plane tickets to Cleveland this spring. So excited to see old friends!
- Also finished reading Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood." Excellent read.
- I played Wii for the first time at Easter at Gale's house (where I also spent Thanksgiving...hooray for Gale's family's sponsorship of orphan holidays) and failed at pretty much everything except WiiFit Hula Hooping...in which I was a "Calorie Incinerator." Awesome.
- I got my first pieces of non-footwear REI gear: my very own packable, 2-person tent and a cozy sleeping bag.


And Chloe approves.

Sun, snow, mountains and bratwurst in 24 hours

This week was A Big Deal in the life of Yitka. I went on my first business trip.


My room!
While the term "business trip" might be conjuring images of airports...laptops in briefcases, business suits and meeting rooms, the click of heels walking on the marble floors of hotel lobbies...this was a different kind of business trip. (I do, however, insist on calling it such.)

Instead, I packed a notebook, swimsuit, hiking boots and my long-untouched Nikon D60, and hit the road after work on Wednesday.


"The road", as it were, was the lovely Highway 2, a route which quickly earned its place among the ranks of (1) the Florida Keys, (2) Highway 1 down the southern California coast, and (3) the entire state of Montana, for Yitka's Favorite Drives in America. I was on route to stay a night at a lovely mountain resort/retreat center buried deep in the wilderness outside of the small town of Leavenworth, Washington, and do an in-depth interview the following morning for a story assignment with OutdoorsNW.

Despite several warnings from friends and acquaintances that Leavenworth, WA is a magical place that's been known to steal the hearts of Seattleites, I suppose I was still half-expecting a sad sort of town with a bunch of prisons.

Instead, I got this:


Adorable Bavarian town nestled in the mountains!
I honestly had no idea what to expect from Leavenworth. But upon the "Wilkommen in Leavenworth" sign along the main drag, I got the idea: little Bavarian miracle town! Surrounded by snow-capped and Evergreen-coated peaks like, I enjoyed a bratwurst for lunch. I bought a couple greeting cards from their local bookshop (I can't ever pass up a rack of well-made greeting cards, and I have discovered a new favorite company.) I took a stroll down by the river. All lovely.

The Sleeping Lady, the resort itself that I stayed at, has been around for 15 years. It originally catered primarily to corporate retreats as a place for team-building, but it's evolved into a family leisure travel destination and personal center for rest and spiritual rejuvenation as well. I couldn't have asked for better timing; I was just lamenting in my journal a couple days ago how much I missed the hammock on my porch in Oberlin, the pond and waterfall in my old backyard in Kansas...basically, just personal outdoor space to relax in at any time of day. Happily, the camp was largely empty and so I had an entire evening to explore and play there in genuine quiet.


After one of the most delectable dinners of my life (freshly caught and grilled salmon with butter sauce, sauteed bok choy, freshly baked bread with fancy brie and chevre cheeses, fresh rhubarb with creme fraishe for dessert...most of the ingredients from local sources...as local as the organic garden fifty yards outside of the resort dining hall), I did something I've never done before: walked into an empty bar - the "Grotto", the resort's cozy onsite tavern - where I sat down, ordered a drink, and spent an hour or two chatting it up with the bartender. We actually had a really awesome conversation, and I appreciated how much easier it is to seek and find human connection in the quiet of a small mountain town than it is in the hustle and bustle of a city. I may love Seattle, but I'll never fully shake the Midwesterner in me...

I followed that up with a solo nighttime soak in the resort's outdoor hot pool - a natural rock hot tub of sorts, with steaming, crystal clear water, and all nestled below a grove of evergreens (and in the case of two nights ago, a gorgeous moon), at the foot of snow-capped mountains. Talk about relaxation. I slept like a baby on one of what are reputed to be the most comfortable mattresses in the world. And awoke to...

Delicious breakfast! Yummy scrambled eggs, spelt bread with rhubarb jam, 19-bean salad, chicken apple sausage, fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice...and my interview! Won't write much here, despite wanting to...but I'll save my excitement from that for the article itself, which will run this summer.

The drive back home later that day involved a snowy traverse over Stevens Pass.


This next picture is one of my favorites from the whole trip...I was driving, rocking out to my music, looked up at the mountains and realized that I was right below the "snow line" - the horizon between the elevation at which it was actively snowing, and the elevation at which it was just raining...the line between which is entirely visible in this photo:


Awesome. What wasn't awesome was traffic coming back into the city. My drive out there was about two and a half hours. My drive home was four hours (four and a half when you include my numerous stops along the way to get out and photograph the scenery from the road.) Damn you, 520 and I-5. Sigh. But otherwise...truly a marvelous little getaway trip. And an exciting story to get down on paper ahead of me...

P.S. Also!!! A seriously awesome plug for a classmate/acquaintance/fellow creative writing major from Oberlin, Miss Lena Dunham, whose feature-length film, Tiny Furniture, just won "Best Narrative Feature" at SXSW in Austin, Texas! Trailer here.