1/04/2015   Portland, ME  
We left Jackson on the morning of the 31st. With a little time to spare I drove out to Cape Ann hoping to spot a Dovekie or Razorbill from the point L+. Both had been seen close to shore two days earlier, pushed in apparently by an east wind. By the time I arrived the wind had shifted to the northwest and had escorted any lingering alcids back out to sea in a crowd of whitecaps.
I caught up to everyone at the hospital where we crowded into Mom's room for an hour or two before heading out to dinner. I don't remember where. In fact, I don't remember much abut our two weeks in Portland other than a snowstorm and fragments of runs I did around the city, mostly in the snow. I didn't record my exercise activity but I did keep bird lists. I didn't find anything rare but was surprised to see both a Northern Mockingbird and a Hermit Thrush still hanging around town L+. Both are able to resrt to berries when bugs get scarce so might be able to make it through winter in southern Maine.

1/06/2015   Both parents down  
We ate well in Portland though again, I don't recall where other than on the night of the fifth. We all went to DeMillo's, a landmark seafood restaurant on the waterfront. I moved into Johm's room that evening since Eric had returned to Jackson. Around 5AM the next morning John woke me up and asked if I would take him to the emergency room. He'd suffered from increasing abdominal pain since supper and thought maybe he had food poisoning.
It wasn't food poisoning. The doctor told us it was probably an obstructed small intestine and advised immediate surgery in case it turned septic. He told we had a half hour to decide, and if it turned septic and he didn't catch it in time, John could die within a few hours. We did discuss what to do but not for long. John was on his way to the operating room within 15 minutes. We spent the afternoon shuttling between his recovery room on the second floor and Mom's room on the eighth, or vice versa. At Daniel's suggestion, we hit an oyster bar for dinner, but it felt strange to be out without John at the head of the table.

1/12/2015  Parents recovering  
A few days after the snowstorm(s) the weather turned clear and cold. The salt water of the harbor froze. So did the pipes in Jackson. I drove up on the tenth and discovered a crack in the masonry wall in the cellar right behind the pump. Very cold air blowing over the inlet pipe had frozen it enough to choke off the water supply, but fortunately not enough to damage the pipe. I stuffed rags in the crack from the inside and shoveled snow up against the wall from the outside, then packed up my stuff and made it back to Portland in time to join the kids for supper.
Mom and John moved into a shared room at a rehabilitation center a day or two later. I caught the bus to Logan on the afternoon of the twelfth. Back in Portland, John recovered more quickly than Mom. Sarah recalls that she was quite put out when John moved out and returned to Jackson leaving her to share her rehab center room with a stranger.

1/13/2015   A dream for the New Year  
A dream sometime recently:
This dream appears to be about having ALS, being alone with it and unable to escape it, and my shame about it. Monica's massage, a formally intimate act, helps a little but not enough.

1/18/2015   Sangree M Froelicher hut  
David and I drove up from Denver with Emily and her friend Molly. David's car was stuffed with gear and the girls had barely enough room to squeeze in. We made the traditional stop at Starbucks in Idaho Springs where I bought a pair of sunglasses to go with my Flat White. Thin ice clouds high overhead diffracted the sun into rainbows. Snowy but wind-scoured mountains loomed above the highway. Frisco was snowy and Copper Mountain snowier yet. Hundreds of cars were turning into the parking lots for the ski area. We kept going, up to and over the pass by the big Climax molybdenum mine and down the other side towards Leadville. We missed the trailhead but found it on the second try. Beda waiting for us.
The trail up to the hut follows a forested valley - groves of lodgepole pine, patches of aspen and up towards treeline, tall Engelman spruce. We ate lunch in the sunshine part way up. David and I were on snowshoes, Beda on skis. All three of us towed sleds packed with gear and food. David and I debated the existence of God during the second half of our ascent. Unlike back in college days, when I argued for and he against, we now both more or less agreed that we didn't know.
The hut was a welcome sight, all warm wood inside and out. We settled in, got acquainted with our hutmates (all friends of Beda's), ate supper all together and photographed the sunset from the front porch.

1/19/2015   Buckeye Peak M+  
Sunrise was glorious, and did in fact predict worsening weather but the snow didn't arrive until after dark. I helped with breakfast, only slightly more than a token effort given the state of my arms and hands though I did manage to fire up the cookstove and afterwards, wash some dishes. We had a relaxed morning and David and I didn't get out on our hike until close to noon.
From the Sangree D Froehlicher hut we snowshoed up the gentle south ridge to the summit, descended the east ridge (with a wild slide down its steep south face) and traversed over to and across the southeast ridge. That part of the hike was an accident; I'd meant to descend the southeast ridge in the first place but dropped off the summit too far to the left. Once back on the southeast ridge we ate a lunch before dropping into a bowl and following the treeline over to the south ridge. My hands were too cold to grip the sandwich so I dropped it on the snow then leaned over and wolfed it down like a dog.
We had a steep climb on hard wind-packed snow up out of a bowl to get back up to the ridge. Our snowshoes kept losing their grip right below the rim and we'd slide down thirty feet or more and have to struggle back up again. I was feeling faint from fatigue at that point and my heart was doing its vibrato thing. Fortunately once we made it up we were only a short walk from the hut. We reached it just before dark.
The temperature was in the low 20s all day but with a brisk southwest wind it felt colder than that. I had left my windshell at the hut and so was a little too cold most of the time. As a consequence my hands didn't work very well at all, especially after taking off my mittens to take photos.
The total distance was 5 miles mostly on firm snow, but in places where we had to wade through thigh-deep depth hoar the going was very strenuous. Despite the depth hoar the snowpack seemed stable; the few steep slopes we encountered tended to be firmly packed by the wind. The sky was overcast most of the time and the light in many places was so flat we couldn't tell whether the ground in front of us went up or down. Flying into Denver I'd been looking down at the snow-covered peaks and longing to be down there hiking around but today provided a bit of a reality check. The combination of flat light, cold wind and unpredictable snow surface reminded me how tough winter hiking in Colorado can be even on easy terrain. I was seriously depleted afterwards with significant ALS cramping in my quads and hamstrings for an hour or so.
Recovered somewhat after supper and had an hour or so of conversation with Beda. That was nice.

1/20/2015     
It snowed overnight, just the way it is supposed to do in Colorado. I woke up early and shoveled out the outhouse path, having picked my way along it in flip-flops a couple of times during the night. I was pleased to discover I could still shovel snow; it's something I've always liked to do.
The people on skis enjoyed the descent more than we who were on snowshoes did. The girls, lacking either, postholed whenever they veered off the packed trail which had been largely obscured by the overnight snow. They held up well and had their reward when we reached the steeper sections lower down and they slid screaming down on their fabric sleds.

1/25/2015   Healed by faith, or not  
Bottom line: some people apparently were but I apparently wasn't. But to explore the possibility I drove down to Redding California for the weekend, Friday and Saturday anyway. Sunday I went birding. As the guest of friends I attended a special Friday evening healing service, then attended the regular Saturday morning healing service as well.
The Friday evening service was more like a pep rally than a worship service. Women, and men too I think, danced with colorful silk veils to the insistent beat of a live rock band. The music was loud, and so were the speakers, who talked about miraculous healings performed in various places by various church leaders before inviting a few lay people up to share their inspiring testimonies. The music grew louder as the speakers called for praise from the congregation, which numbered at least 1000 people in stadium seating arranged in a semicircle around the stage. Invitations for healings, and testimonies about healings, alternated with shouts of praise but neither praise nor testimonies nor loud music availed to heal me. Nor did one-on-one prayer from first lay volunteers, then lay leaders, and finally the man at the microphone himself. I didn't blame them for the failure, nor myself for that matter. ALS is an act of a God who will not be deterred by enthusiasm and loud music.
The Saturday morning service still employed dancers, along with other performers and even visual artists, but was a much quieter affair, substituting thoughtful one-on-one counseling and quiet prayer for the praise and loud music. Unfortunately the outcome for me was about the same, with less tinnitus afterwards. My counselor, a man about my own age, asked me about forgiveness - whether I needed to forgive or be forgiven - but we didn't come up with anything conclusive.
Sunday morning at 11AM I started a bird list at Marine Park L+ along the river east of Fort Vancouver. We walked east on the paved trail to the marina and a little farther, then followed the beach on our way back until it ended at a secluded sand spit. Returning to the trail we watched a Barred Owl dive out of a young cedar tree to grab a snake from the grass in front of us. The owl and nine other species from that checklist were new for me in Clark County but that was seven or eight years before we started paying attention to our county lists so we didn't notice.

1/26/2015   Forgiveness  
I forgave God this morning. I've been angry at him for a long time. It's not that he hasn't blessed me. I suspect I've been blessed more than most, but like my biological father God asked impossible things of me then condemned to me when I failed to achieve them. I turned to him for love and for acceptance but found instead condemnation and rejection. I believed I was a bad person when I first turned to him and he only confirmed that. For years I struggled unsuccessfully to see him as loving me enough to accept me into his kingdom. Oh he loved me all right but because I didn't measure up to his standards he would in the end have to, with tears in his eyes, pack me off to bitter recrimination and ultimate death.
When I finally recognized through the help of Soltura that my image of God was merely the projection of my own self-condemnation, and that only through loving and accepting myself could I deliver myself from that sense of condemnation, I began to move in that direction and as I began to accept myself as loving and good, I found less need of God. But I was still angry at him. Even after I mostly didn't believe that he even existed, I was still angry at him. And that didn't make much sense.
The thing about forgiving someone, at least for me, is that you have to let go of the anger and when you do that, you have to deal with the sadness that spawned the anger in the first place. Under my anger I found sadness that God didn't love me the way I had hoped he would, sadness that probably echoed my sadness that my father didn't love me the way I wanted him to when I was a child. I also found that I had to forgive myself for not being the kind of man that God would love, the kind of little boy that my father would've loved. More grief, more tears. I accepted the sadness and forgave myself and them, and as I did, I could imagine Jesus also forgiving me. As for God the Father, not much happened when I forgave him though it felt good to be free of that anger at last. The sadness lingered curling like smoke from a cigarette then dissipated leaving a bit of a stink in the air.
A faint scent of sadness accompanies me much of the time these days. My hands are getting weaker, so weak that tying my shoelaces, opening and closing a Ziploc bag, buttoning and unbuttoning my blue jeans, signing my name are all a struggle now. I haven't been able to tuck in my shirts for months. I keep my wallet in my front pocket because I can't get it out of my back pocket. I can still drive but it takes two hands to turn the key to turn the car off. Parking my Subaru feels like parking a loaded dump truck. Arms and hands are significantly weaker than they were a month ago or maybe two or three months ago, it doesn't really matter. The fun phase of ALS, where I get to figure out new ways of doing things because I'm not strong enough to do them the normal way, is coming to an end. Now the shitty phase begins, when my arms and hands don't work at all and I can't do anything for myself, and I can't do any of the things that I love. Or most of them anyway. I can still run.
So I get out running most days, though often not until after dark when I chase the dim light of my headlamp in a vain attempt to leave the sadness behind. I suspect it will be with me until I die. But I'm grateful that it doesn't plague me all the time, just some of the time, and that there are times of love and joy as well just like normal people have. In those times, with the voice of my anger quieted, I can even hope to hear in my heart whether God's there or not. And if She is perhaps I can know Her as She is, at last.

1/30/2015   New Hampshire  
I don't recall my reasons for returning to New Hampshire after just over two weeks back in Seattle and my photos, mostly uninspiring images of winter landscapes taken while I was out on the roads and ski touring trails, don't provide any clues. Mom would have returned around then from rehab after her stroke and John was still recovering from his surgery, so I probably intended to help out around the house, clean up from Christmas, do some cooking and shopping. Hopefully I did some of that, and didn't just go out walking and skiing. Strange to think that now, eleven years later, no one knows whether I was of any help or not. John and Eric are both dead and Mom doesn't remember and Sarah and Roger were no doubt back in Sweden. No one knows any longer, and no one else cares. Multiply that by millions and billions of people and hundreds and thousands of years and that's a staggering amount of living, forgotten. No wonder we long for someone, some god perhaps, to remember it all (and be very forgiving about it).
I did manage to squeeze in a fair amont of birding, mostly short outings (while shoveling snow perhaps) at or around the house. During my two week visit I found 20 species+, all within about ten miles of the house.

2/08/2015   Dream  
A dream last night:
The dream was like a colorful fantasy. The expedition - our trip to Newfoundland the summer Dad died. The Blow-me-downs - mountains I've always wanted to explore, but out of reach. Meadow and lake - maybe the Goat Run marathon last August. Trapped in the house - ALS. The wolf and the coke machine - prayer for healing at Bethel church. The tunnel beyond the zigzag hole - death.

2/09/2015   Dream  
A dream last night:
At Soltura Carole observed at some point that safety was a big issue for me, finding a place where I could be safe. Safety, and threats to my safety, seem to be the theme of this dream. Sitting in the fenced garden with friends feels safe, but from within the garden come multiple threats in the form of yellowjackets and the animal which is like a dog but combines an opossum and a cat. The man by the pole beans reminded me of a man at Volunteer Park Church who Susan said wanted to date her around the time she and I got together. Representing me, he inadvertently provokes the yellowjackets. Flying in formation, the hornets represent a threat but one which is somewhat abstract, and with which moreover I have successfully dealt in the past, as indicated by the destroyed nests. The threat imposed by the animal is more intractable; I cannot fully eliminate it. It is at a minimum a reference to my life with Susan in Auburn, where our cat tangled several times with an opossum and lost. An opossum is an irritable animal with sharp teeth, harmless at a distance but dangerous in close quarters. A cat on the other hand is affectionate, soft and cuddly. Together I think they represent aspects of my experience of Susan. A dog in multiple subsequent dreams represents God, and in this dream I think symbolizes my conflation of Susan with God. Ultimately neither Susan nor God proved safe for me, although in both cases my inability to find safety in them had more to do with who I am than who they were, an insight suggested in this dream by my inability to kill the animal.

2/11/2015   Wildcat Mountain M+  
My objective was to find Boreal Chickadees. They can be seen on the Washington Auto Road and up around Tuckerman's or on the trails approaching Slide Peak but I've also seen them on Wildcat Mountain on the ski trail down the backside L+. That would be a nice snowshoe hike, not too far from home, and more interesting than hiking up to Tuckerman's so that's where I went.
Eric didn't seem to be interested in going with me so I went alone. It was a calculated risk since with my weakend arms and hands I could more easily get into a situation where I might not be able to put on warm clothes if I needed them or even perhaps recover from a fall in deep snow. But I figured there would be at least a few people on the trail, and if I was careful I would be okay. The weather was favorable too, temperature in the 20s with little wind and lots of sunshine.
The 5 mile hike up from the Carter Notch Road trailhead took me 2 1/2 hours, not a bad pace and it included several stops. One of them was for Boreal Chickadees. I heard them first and then saw one, foraging in a loose flock with nuthatches in mature birch-fir forest. I find them very appealing for some reason, perhaps the way the subdued grays and browns of their crown and back complement the warm buff color of their flanks, or perhaps just that they're hard to find. I wonder if they compete with Black-capped Chickadees and if that is why they stay high in the mountains where the latter are less common. They seem less aggressive than their black-capped cousins and perhaps I identify with that. Whatever my reasons I was delighted to find them. The first one I saw was quite close, poking around in the lichen of the dead branches of a fir tree by the trail. I imagine I could have taken some good pictures if I'd had the camera with me, but I didn't even bring the camera to New Hampshire since I can't handle it very well anymore. And in any case, my experience has been that it is a lot easier to imagine getting good pictures of Boreal Chickadees than it is to actually get them.
I heard and even glimpsed them a couple more times on the trip, but both Black-capped Chickadees and Red-breasted Nuthatches were much more common. There were flocks of nuthatches; they must winter high because I've seen scarcely any down in Jackson. There weren't many other birds - Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers, a Golden-crowned Kinglet and a raven flying over high that could have been a crow - it takes me a while to get used to how big the crows are back here as compared to Seattle.
From the top of the ski area, I scrambled up to the observation platform on wildcat D. The deck was piled high with snow. I dug out my phone and took photos of the presidential range but my hands were clumsy and somehow none of the photos ended up in focus. In the bright light of sun and sky and snow, I didn't notice. Daniel called while I was up there; we talked for a few minutes about kayaking but I had to cut the conversation short lest I lose all control of my hands. Zipping up my coat took multiple attempts. Eventually I succeeded by snagging the zipper pull on the stub of a broken tree branch.
I think it was 6 PM when I got back to the car. It was pretty much dark. On the way down I worried a bit about being able to get my snowshoes off but reassured myself that if need be I could snowshoe all the way home. I didn't have to do that.

2/26/2015   Dream  
A dream last night:
Not much feeling in the dream: some shame about not knowing what I wanted to eat or how to order it, some irritation at the line for the restroom, embarrassment about dropping the lattice thing I was trying to juggle / flip, fear about being seen urinating. It's noteworthy that I, despite taking initiative and trying, was unable to do anything that I wanted to do.

3/01/2015   Dream  
A dream last night:
Marc doing the run represents me going ahead with my divorce because I know in my mind that it is right for me despite my anxiety about it. The "I" in the dream is a part of me that is fears to follow and anticipates that it will end in disaster. The girl who went first could be Sarah, whose divorce turned out well, but my words of encouragement are really intended for that fearful part of me that is scared to...do what? "Laura" and telling the family are references to my birding on my own in Richland today after the race. With the conclusion of mediation today, my divorce is essentially accomplished. I'm on my own, and today I was literally on my own. And afraid - of walking around the north Richland neighborhood where Lauren reported a Pine Grosbeak, of ordering dinner at Trejo's Mexican restaurant the evening. Lynn suggested that the fear around the divorce is a fear of being on my own, of growing up. The sadness that welled up as we talked told me she was right about that.

3/26/2015   Wildcat Mountain painting  
I did the underpainting back in December and the painting sat around in my room for three months. I wondered if perhaps the underpainting was sufficient to satisfy my urge to capture the scene but finally last week I did the sky and mountains. How much nicer they looked with the repainting! To keep the style loose I'm painting the whole thing with two filbert brushes, a two and a four, though I may need to use a small bright or round for some of the branch detail. I wanted to avoid the mistake I made on the Ptarmigan painting. On that one I was seduced into using small sable substitutes and the result was a bit fussy.
I experimented with a variety of ways to produce the gray of the clouds; ultramarine blue and burnt umber was my old goto cloud gray but I was happier in this painting replacing the burnt umber with quinacridone (ie burnt) sienna. The lighter parts of the cloud are tinted with raw sienna and/or Hansa yellow. Unfortunately I've already forgotten the mix I used on the mountain, perhaps pthalo blue, quinacridone sienna and raw sienna. I also borrowed from the gray mixes left over from the clouds so there's probably a bit of everything mixed in there.
The trees were tough. I knew they would be so I kept putting off getting started on them. They still need some detail work. The colors are pthalo green, quinacridone sienna and Hansa yellow and I feel like they are either too bright or not bright enough but I'm not sure which. Maybe they're just too green; the details, which are gray-brown, will help with that.
I had dinner with John tonight at Vios Café. His Mezze with green olive tapenade and Tsatziki was better than mine with braised greens and baba ghanouj. The rustic bread and olive oil appetizer was very satisfying. We discussed how churches of all stripes, not just liberal ones, are declining in the US. He attributes his success at Green Lake to its ability to attract some fraction of the Adventists, young and older, who forsake rural and suburban churches for the attractions of the city, and considers himself fortunate to be at a church correctly situated to increase its share of a shrinking pie. I consider myself fortunate that he shares his thoughts with me.
On the way home, shopping at PCC for food for the weekend away, I was sad. I don't know why. I'm heading east of the mountains to run the Yakima Canyon marathon and do a bunch of birding. It will be fun.

3/27/2015   Umtanum Road  
I was heading over to Yakima to pick up my race packet for the marathon the next day and Darchelle was heading over to Yakima to meet her Dad and continue on Walla with him so we drove over there together. On the way we stopped at Durr and Umtanum Roads to check for early sagebrush birds and flowers.
We did better with birds on Durr Road L+ but photographed the flowers along Umtanum Road. No bird photos this time.

3/28/2015   Yakima Canyon Marathon  
I wrote at the time "Gorgeous day and good birding but felt tired and sore for last 10 miles and struggled to achieve 10 min/mile even early in the race." but I don't remember anything about this, my seventh and final Yakima Canyon Marathon, other than that I called Darchelle from mile 15. She had run it with me a year earlier but this year I was on my own so I counted birds and came up with 46 species +.
During the race this morning I picked up three new birds for the year then afterwards added two more during a drive up the valley to Nile. The Ruffed Grouse was eating cottonwood buds high above the forest road along Nile Creek - the first time I'd seen one doing that.

3/29/2015   Toppenish birding  
The day after the marathon I drove several roads in the Toppenish NWR L+ looking for birds and found 45 species. The snipe were winnowing and the Red-winged Blackbirds were defnding territories, or maybe just showing off.

3/30/2015   Dreams of making it through  
A fragment of a dream from a couple of nights ago:
An odd bird is trapped so I set it free and now it will be able to make it to a place of refuge, representing optimism about my situation, I guess.
Another fragment of a dream, this from last night:
This time I find myself in a threatening situation and yet I manage to maintain control, another optimistic message.