As is sometimes the case, I have to say that I disagree with Jake about the reason that I haven't written a post since August or so (as a disclaimer, most of it is laziness that I'll try to mask with some esoteric rationalization). The act of writing down one's experiences, with commentary, is self-indulgent and subject to every cliche in the book, and more than anything, is intimidating in every sense. I always feel a sort of high after finally finishing a post, as I did with my columns, because it's always such a weight, for whatever reason—I always feel like I need to be writing down and capturing everything I'm feeling and experiencing (for reasons outlined in my first post ever here I think), and constantly feel guilty when I put it off and put it off (in this case, for about two months. Two months of guilt--should've written this on Yom Kippur, would've been a more apt release). So when I finally write one, it is such a release, especially the longer I've waited (holding back certain jokes because of the readership). It's intimidating because I always feel like there's so much to capture, and so much that I want to write, that the task seems too impossible the longer I wait, and then I put it off longer, and then it gets more impossible—the miserable feedback loop of some kind of writer's block.
And to clarify, as I alluded to before, I don't do these to feel self-important or to compel people to read about my life and what's happening—if anything, it's mostly an exercise for myself. Luckily, with the advent of the internet and blogs and all of that lovely alienation, it's a mostly solitary experience, as I can write whatever I want, put it out there, and not even think about the fact that people are actually reading it (except for from phone calls with my parents). But that adds to another level of intimidation—I know at least a few people are reading it, my personal thoughts, and I want them to count, and if cliched, at least be meaningful in some way (aka not make me sound like a dumbass, which is probably impossible to completely avoid).
Also unfortunate is the moments when I'm truly motivated to write a post, which is usually when I'm on a long bus ride, or taking a long walk back or to something, or in the case of Oregon, at the top of something or in view of something awesome(ful), and in these cases it's actually a good thing I don't have a computer, but a bad thing because by the time I get back to a place with a computer, I usually just want to eat something and have a beer and take a nap. Look at that, three paragraphs about procrastination. That's got to be meta in some way, right Jake? The meandering start to what will inevitably be a very long, very meandering piece to scratch the surface of the past two months.
Hopefully I really will write much more frequently while in Spain, which I actually think will be the case, mostly because I have many more hours of leisure than when I was in Oregon (and much more access to quaint little European cafés with incredible café con leches, how's that for cliché.) If anything, Jake and I meant this blog as a place for our thoughts on being abroad, and while being in Oregon was certainly being abroad in some sense, this is where I envisioned most of my posts coming from. I do still have a lot to write about Oregon, and I think that being here and having some distance will make it much easier. I also hope to finally fulfill my hope that this site will be a place for other people to post, especially people who are also abroad, and that will be starting today when I finally post an incredible piece that Emily wrote a couple weeks ago and I felt too guilty to post because I didn't have anything yet. So here's to another, hopefully not false, start.
I saw Boyhood over the summer with my dad and one of my best friends from home, which is going to be a post on its own, but for now will just serve as the hook of what I want to say. For people who don't know, Boyhood was a movie from one of my favorite directors, Richard Linklater, that was filmed over the course of twelve years and attempts to capture the lives of a family through the adolescence of a boy living in Texas. The movie is hilarious and hard-to-watch at the same time because it hits so close to home, especially with the faux philosophizing that the characters in engage in that sounds exactly how we sounded and still sound like. Watching some of the conversations is almost comedic because it's such a parody of itself, but of course it's so comedic because it's so hyper-realistic, and also completely grounded in truth, no matter how heavy-handed. The best of these conversations was the very last scene of the film, which I unfortunately can't find, so will do my best to summarize. The eponymous boy has just moved in for his freshman year of college, and gone of a nature hike with his new roommate and a couple of girls (under the influence of edibles or shrooms or something of the like). In the last moment of the movie, he's sitting with one of the girls looking over some beautiful vista, and she says that you can't seize the moment, but the moment seizes you. He replies, yeah, it's like, you know man, it's always right now. Sure, they're 18 year olds under the influence of hallucinogens, and sometimes you feel cynical when you hear something like that, and sometimes you laugh, and sometimes it really hits home.
The scene is painfully meta in so many ways, mostly because it's a film that attempts to capture boyhood not through one single narrative but through a series of seemingly disconnected moments that arch together to form a larger, looser narrative than normally showcased in movies. Time is and always will be one of my favorite things to write about because I think the linearity and passage of time (and everything that comes with it--growth, memory, death, etc., etc.) is one of the most insane parts of everyday life that doesn't get constantly talked about. The only thing we have going for us, really, is the very, exact present moment, and the faith that everything we think happened before us actually happened. And that faith is mostly grounded in memory and personal history, which when you think about it, seems like a fluid, connected narrative, but is really just thousands or maybe even millions, depending on how many brain cells you have left, of individual moments that your brain pieces together. When you stop to separate them, what are the memories that piece together your conception of your life? It's certainly not everything--I would say that of every moment I have lived, I probably have retained .00001% of those moments, which are what are strung together to make my own personal narrative of my life.
So what makes up those memories? What does my brain and consciousness choose to retain? Some are hazier, and some are crystal clear—those crystal clear moments, the ones that stand like massive obelisks, are what one lives for (or at least what I live for). The moments that have defined your life, and have changed the way you think and act. The reason I came abroad is that when I'm doing an experience like this one, those moments come with such a higher level of frequency than if I were to, say, be working an office job, it seems crazy that anybody subjects themselves to that life.
My second to last night in Oregon was probably in one of those top ten moments of my life. After spending five or six weeks working in, as one of my co-workers loved to say, a hellacious burned out apocalyptic wasteland, and three weeks working in a much more verdant area, yet not a calendar-worthy spot (and also being camped out at lakes that were so questionable that they were responsible for one staph infection, two eye infections, and two clogged water filters), we finally got to work at one of those sites that make Oregon one of the most beautiful places on Earth for our last week. We'd heard about it all summer--the fabled Table Lake--and after having it dangled in front of us like a carrot for twelve weeks, were finally guaranteed that we would in fact be stationed there for an eight day hitch, albeit with a loopy old man who is the Deschutes National Forest's most dedicated volunteer--an ex-engineer who probably weighs 80 pounds, wears a bandana around his neck like a cravat, and would give us sheets with diagrams and calculations on how to install log checks into trails (which if you know what working on a backcountry trail crew is like, is fucking hilarious because of its egregious unlikelihood of being utilized).
A fairly strenuous ten mile hike to the site, we were packed out by six beautiful horses and their handler, an incredible older woman who shared dinner with us when we finally set up camp at nine that night and told us about the horse rescue shelter she runs and the trailer she lives in because she so fully dedicates her life to the cause. The trek out was initially through one of the worst burns in the area--the 2002 B&B fire—but after about a mile or so started winding through gorgeous forest, finally breaking out after five miles at the impossibly blue Carl Lake, buffeted on the far side by steep cliffs. After I climbed up the cliffs through a series of switchbacks, I broke ahead of the rest of the group, and began what I'm fairly certain was the most incredible hike of my life, and one that I really can't use adjectives or an accurate account to describe, so I'll do it with mostly pictures. I will say that they do not capture the magnificence and awe-inducing nature of the hike, which was created by the sheer wilderness of the location of the trek, the vast unending and massive views on all sides, and other, more personal and emotional factors. After a final climb, we arrived at Table Lake, an eden that once again I will only describe with photos.
Carl Lake as seen from the trail
Long view of Carl
View of Carl from on top of the switchbacks
Beautiful overlook above Carl
Trail snaking through piles of two different types of rock—volcanic on the left, glacial on the right (both piles are very, very tall)
Mt. Jefferson--10,497 feet and the second tallest in OR--begins to rear its majestic head
One of my favorite parts of the trail, mostly devoid of trees, with massive piles of volcanic rock on the right and Jeff in the background
Really cool rock formation by the trail
Table Lake from above
Table Lake from ground level
At sunset
One last view from our campsite on a little hill right above--you can see the little stream that feeds the lake where we would get water.
It's called Table Lake because of a formation called the Table that stands above the lake--essentially a plateau or mesa that looks like a steep cliff when you're standing at the lake. It's about an 800 foot climb up to the Table that we heard was difficult but possible, and of course rewarding due to the views of Mt. Jefferson and the fact that there's probably a square mile of plateau to explore at the top. This would be my last night with my three person Student Conversation Association trail crew/impossibly dysfunctional family that I had spent almost every moment of the past four months with, so we decided to end the summer with a bang and camp out on top of the Table for the last night. After eating dinner down below, we began the climb up at about 5 pm. It turned out to be one of the more difficult rock scrambles I've done, very difficult, with the face covered with scree and loose rock. There were loosely defined switchbacks created by deer and other creatures which somehow climb the Table of a regular basis (those fuckers have four legs), and we followed those up to the first plateau, the lower Table. From the lower Table, there's probably another 200 foot climb to the upper Table, which we decided to go up to because we heard there was a lake (which had of course dried out by that time of the year.) We found a good spot at the end of the Table, about a half mile away from where we summited, and laid down a tarp and our sleeping bags--no tent, just cowboy camping.
The Table from below--we climbed the saddle right in the middle to the Lower Table, and then climbed up another face to the Upper Table. Doesn't look too steep from this perspective, but it's pretty vertical and filled with scree.
View from atop the Lower Table with Jeff in the background--the flat land you see is at actually the mesa, way above the lake.
Another view from atop the Lower Table
I'm pretty sure this is the Upper Table
A view with Jeff in the background
Our camp spot with my two compadres and Mt. Jeff to keep us company
We opened some beers and lit up a couple cigars we had hiked up, and enjoyed each other's company for the last time. The sun began to go down and the stars came out, in more stunning clarity than I had seen all summer because of how high up we were, how out in the wilderness we were, and how clear the night was. Unprotected from the wind and high enough up that the temperature was about 10 degrees cooler than at the lake, we wrapped ourselves up and laid down side by side on the tarp, watching the full panorama above us. At about 10 pm, a light as bright as the sun began to glow from the horizon, and I saw my first legitimate moonrise--a moon a day or two removed from full that filled the night sky so fully that the stars were no longer visible. Slowly conversation stopped, and we were just silent, looking up.
That's one of those moments. How can I describe it, and how can it not seem as comedically cliche and parodic as that last scene in Boyhood. It can't, but that, really, is what made it that moment--it defined so much, and was so massive and all-encompassing, that it can't be described without coming off as a shadow of every other attempt to capture the heights of the human experience, or at least individual human experiences. In that moment everything came crashing down--graduating from college, spending four months in unspeakable beauty and reflection, and my eminent departure from Spain for a year--the fact of how disparate my life is, how irreconcilable, the idea of being at Columbia, and then the Oregon wilderness, and then Galicia, Spain, in four months, and with it all the people and experiences and moments, all part of one narrative and connected but so insanely different at the same time--all this on the backdrop of unadulterated wilderness, and all the feelings of insignificance and smallness that come with being in such a place and under such a sky.
And here I am, less than three weeks later, in a cafe in Santiago de Compostela, in as different a place as one could possibly be. And the moments just keep coming, at a whole other level, as comes with the nature of living immersed in a different culture with a different language. This is the absurdity of life, and why I decided to do this year, and hope to be able to live even a shadow of this life for the rest of my life. More posts to come.
