Seeking fresh air, will travel
Rolling out in the Airstream
Howdy! If you’re new around here, welcome to Traipsing About, my newsletter about reclaiming creativity and ditching tired personal paradigms. No ChattyChat bots here—credit is mine for all drawings, photos, bad jokes, and typos.
It’s been a minute. Let’s call it my Italian-style August recess… I hope your summer went (past tense already?!) swimmingly.
This week on Airstreaming About, Edition #137:
Dodging smoky skies.
Textures of the Olympics.
What would it mean to be done?
Traipsing Tidbits.
In case you missed it: Last time, I wrote about shifting gears on adventure and how getting on stage to play piano feels far more adventurous these days than a bikepacking trip.
A summer smoke escape
“I’ve been here in Quinault for 54 years. I like it,” said Don as he filled up our propane tank. “Kinda place that hasn’t gotten bigger…or smaller.”
Indeed, things feel paused, even primordial out here on the Olympic Peninsula. It’s a land of giant trees, moss on ferns on moss, rain dumping from the sky in August.
We’re tucked into alders near the Hoh River on a quiet off-grid Hipcamp (Airbnb for camping). The Clubhouse, as we’re calling the Airstream, is a cozy retreat as the rain patters away this evening.
Fresh air abounds. And it’s exactly why we’re up here.
A month ago, we popped out to the Oregon coast for a trip. Enroute home, fires turned our route into a hazy, clouded disaster. The smoke pressed on our chest like a heavy hand.
Our eighth summer in Bend, yet again more fires and constantly checking Purple Air for the AQI (air quality index). Prior to 2017, I’d never looked up air quality in my LIFE! As a local friend quipped, “I’d give my left arm to forget that fucking acronym.”
Well, we got our Airstream specifically to get outta Dodge …so we did just that. Before we even arrived home, we’d planned a three-month trip. Straight west to the coast, up through the Olympic Peninsula to Bellingham, east to the N. Cascades and eventually over to Idaho to visit our parents before returning to Oregon.
In two frenzied weeks, we prepped our house for tenants and crammed everything we needed into the trailer. (Our first big trip in it, so let’s just say we overpacked a bit.) Smoky skies and blasting temps were the perfect spur in our side to make it happen.
Are we Smokefugees®? All I know is that after seven summers of smoke in Bend, we can’t sit through another one. It gnaws at us, cancels plans, seeps into our home like a venom.
In fact, lately talking about the smoke feels like rationalizing being in an abusive relationship. “Oh, AQI only hit me a little today, it was just orange AQI” or “we haven’t had bad air in over a week!”
Ironically, the unseasonally heavy rain subdued fires in the West, so it’s lovely all over Oregon and Washington at the moment. #timingfail for us, but hooooray for everyone else..and we’re still happy to be roadtripping!
Brief reprieve aside, I’m in some phase of climate grief seeing the entire West go up in flames every year. So many communities, people and animals affected, so many beautiful places impacted. I don’t want to leave Bend in the summer (boo hoo hoo). It’s both my and Chelsea’s favorite season in a place we love, a time for bike rides, gardening, back porch dinners with friends, or evening sunset walks on the river.
But…here we are. The climate crisis is upon us and everyone on this planet will feel its impacts. We know we can’t escape it, Airstream trips or not.
Still, getting out of the haze has lifted the millstone from our chests enough to allow a breath of literal and figurative fresh air. We’re hiking through old growth forests, strolling the beach, sleeping in, mentally unwinding. Aside from some trailer-life learning curveballs and mental adjustment to long-term travel, it’s been mostly delightful.
In down moments, the climate crisis remains on my mind and I’m seeking solace and wisdom in books and people who think about these things. As Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh said in this fantastic essay,
“Our mind is very important”; if we allow despair to take over, we don’t have any strength left to do anything at all. That is why we should do anything we can to prevent despair from happening.”
I know there’s no safe place. We’re all in this boat called Earth together, stormy waters ahead. Lately I’m strongly feeling gratitude to have the resources and flexibility to travel, to make any choices about all this.
For now, I’m listening to the tink tink tink of rain on the roof of the Clubhouse. It’ll clear up soon and we’ll head out to wander around some more in a land that feels like a dinosaur might pop up from behind a mossy log at any second.
Textures of the Olympics
The huge trees, ocean and rivers are magnificent here. I’m also captivated by the up-close bark textures, the moss, the ferns, and mushrooms. With so much moisture, every surface is a little world. Here’s a collage to capture the feel (zoom in!).
When are we done for the day?
I wish I’d read this post about being done for the day from The Imperfectionist back in my peak working days. Even now, it’s useful—I don’t have to finish researching insurance options today!
Some key points from it:
“Being done for the day” turns the focus inwards: to what it would take to allow yourself to feel done. It’s about what you might reasonably expect of yourself today, given your actual situation and limitations, regardless of what might by some other definition “need” doing.
If the crop you’re tending is emails, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the work is endless—and easy to imagine that some wildly impossible target, such as answering a hundred in an hour, might in fact be within your capacities.
“Stopping anyway”—stopping in the knowledge that for finite humans, the work is never done—reorients you to the depth of the present moment. It helps you stop ceaselessly chasing the imaginary future point at which everything will have been handled, so that life can really begin.
Traipsing About Tidbits
Note: none of these links are ever affiliate links, just stuff I use, enjoy or admire.
I’m psyched to publish my first article for the popular UK-based piano blog The Crossed-Eye Pianist. I’ll be writing a regular monthly column about being an adult learner. As a bonus, I won’t be boring all of you with piano talk, *chortle* BUT I’m still gonna link to them because there are a surprising amount of musicians who read Traipsing.
Returning to the climate crisis, another excellent resource is Generation Dread, a newsletter about “how to cope with our dangerous climate reality and cultivate resilience in these times.” I find the ideas actionable and steadying.
These $40 slim-fit Wrangler pants are my new go-to activity pants for hiking and riding. Thanks Mason!
Elon is a whackadoo, but wow… Starlink is amaaazing. (My first trip with it.) Magic internet from the sky! If you’re traveling full-time and don’t have it yet, do yourself a favor.
A quote to ponder
The way to live: "The private kindness of one individual towards another; a petty, thoughtless kindness; an unwitnessed kindness. Something we could call senseless kindness. A kindness outside any system of social or religious good."
-From Gomorrah, a wild, sobering book about the Italian Comorra.
That be all for Traipsing About newsletter #137.
This week’s unsolicited advice:
Mixing it up—I’d love to hear your advice, actions, or general approach to living in a time of climate crisis. Just hit reply and send me an email, or commenting works too.
Onward,
Dakota
Thanks for reading Traipsing About! I appreciate your time and attention in a world where it’s a precious commodity.
Love the photos!
Thanks! This area is such an enjoyable place to photograph. So much variety, near and far.