are now posted in the Photo Gallery. Not everything i took, but enough to give you an idea.
Just got back into Seattle from a 100 mile hike on the Pacific Crest Trail from Stevens Pass to Stehekin, WA. I don't have time now to do it any justice, and in fact any words would be inadequate to describe what we (my friend Amy Stork and I) just hiked through. So vast and rugged and complex a range of mountains are the North Cascades. Basically from Snoqualmie Pass (I-90) northward the range changes from the relatively regular spacing of distinct volcanoes rising above forested ridges, to an enormous ocean of jagged peaks and ridges (and still a couple of big volcanoes too.) Geologically the North Cascades were once a micro-continent something like New Zealand or the Main Island of Japan which drifted along and glommed onto North America. So rugged that a huge portion of it has managed to remain wild, too steep and snowy and serrated to do anything utilitarian with. Many high valleys in which never have been built any trail, let alone a road.
My next zine project may be a more detailed accouting of the hike and the natural and human history along the route.
Now about to bus south again to Eugene then Reno and Burning Man.
In Seattle again for a few days before a hiking excursion in the North Cascades with my friend Amy, after that bus down to Reno to retrieve my bike and go to Burning Man, then back on up to Portland to resume "normal" life. Meaning finding a place to live again, a money-procuring position of some description, etc, and prepare for a showing of my art Last Thursday of September at Everyday Wine at 16th and NE Alberta.
I was hoping to have new paintings completed but may instead show a
combination of oil paintings and painted ceramicware peices.
Here in Seattle i'm working in collaboration with my friend Sung Kim on a project for a group show at Luscious Studio (321 3rd Ave S., 3rd floor) opening this Thursday.
Our piece involves an old length of rusty heavy cable, fraying in the middle, and a brass plumb-bob and line, also fraying. Hard to describe it well in words, has to do with tension and the perception of imminent release or destruction, or the juxtapostion of slow decay and sudden catastrophe. Or something like that.
Now let me tell you about a great old fashioned rock 'n roll show. I don't go to many noisy rock shows anymore, but last night Luscious Studio hosted Calvin Johnson's Dub Narcotic Sound System, as well as The Arm (also from Olympia) and a band from Tuscon called the Osmoniks. I missed the Tuscon Band but The Arm was a fine young band worth watching out for again, and Dub Narcotic, oh goodness. I don't know of any musician with more sheer physical energy than Calvin Johnson. The whole thing was a joyfully exploding hootenany of clanging banging rock'n roll. Pretty impressive from a guy who could be described as an elder statesman.
Boy, it's been awhile since i wrote anything. I've been visiting in
Minnesota, my Mom and her sister and brother have a cottage on a lake
about 70 miles east of the border with North Dakota. My great Grandfather
Reed built the place in 1920 on land that had some years prior been
logged of its great stands of White and Red Pine, and before that had been
home to Anishinabe Ojibwe (Chippewa) and before that the woodland Sioux
whom the Ojibwe displaced starting in the 18th century. The Ojibwe
originated in what is now the northeastern Great Lakes area but moved
westward due to the complex pressures of an expanding European populace,
i.e. they were driven from place to place and in turn drove the Sioux
westward to the plains. But wherever they've been they have always been
woods people. In this area they live on the White Earth Reservation
several miles north of our cottage. Most of the land within the reservation
boundaries was swindled away from the nominal title holders in the!
early years of the 20th century. Now the most famous daughter of the
White Earth band, Winona LaDuke, has a project called the White Earth
Land Recovery Project, to raise money and buy back land within the
boundaries and do other worthy things like language preservation and
diabetes prevention. The WLRP sells wild rice and maple syrup harvested on the
reservation, and various other items. They just got a contract to be
the exclusive provider of wild rice to the main natural food co-op in
Minneapolis.
After the timber barons cut most of the trees they ran off to the
Pacific Northwest, where for some time now folks have been struggling over
the final scraps of what hasn't yet been sent to the mills, even as the
barons (in modern corporate guise) move on to yet greener pastures such
as vast pine plantations in the South.
Trees do of course usually grow back, and today the northern Minnesota
countryside is a bucolic patchwork of mixed deciduous woods
interspersed with pines that escaped the big cut and marginal farms and abandoned
pastures. And of course thousands of lakes of every shape and size,
ranging from totally wild to totally surrounded by homes and cabins.
What mountains and coast are to Oregonians and Washingtonians, lakes
are to Minnesotans. The place to go for the weekend or for one's entire
vacation. And of course all the little towns have summer festivals and
parades. Sunday my Aunt Lisa and I went to see the annual Turkey Days
parade in nearby town of Frazee. Frazee is basically Lake Wobegon with a
giant Turkey statue. Small town parades are fun because practically
everyone participates. And not only was there the Turkey Princess but
Dairy Princesses from several nearby towns (the kind of princess or queen
depends on the local agricultural crop.) It was heartening to see that
the Dairy Princesses were not required to have anorexic beauty queen
figures. In fact they looked positively well fed, as befitting all those
dairy products.