April 25, 2002

• I went for a long drive today, to the Olympic mountains. Hurricane Ridge was my destination.
  
  No pictures, because it wasn’t a picture-taking day; it was a go and spend time alone in a car day. I have those from time to time.
  
  I’m in a frame of mind where no matter what I’m doing, I think I should be doing something else more productive. Like, instead of sitting at the ‘puter writing a program I should be mowing the lawn. Or if I’m mowing the lawn, there are a million computer programming ideas in my head and I should go deal with them. That sort of thing.
  
  So when I got to Hurricane Ridge, I fell asleep in the car. I felt a little tired, probably due to the altitude (the road to the ridge goes up from sea level to something like 8,000 ft. in 20 miles or so), and stretched out in the back seat. I slept for an hour and dreamed rich, detailed dreams that tied all the concerns of my life together into once nice tidy package and presented it to me. I can’t remember how the dream went, specifically, just a sense of symmetry while waking up.
  
  I woke up an hour after parking the car, and had a moment of disorientation.. Where the hell was I? Oh yeah. The top of some of the most beautiful mountains on the planet. Poke my head up high enough to see out the window. Surrounded by a barrier wall of faraway mountain peaks, guarding against all that’s ugly in man. Below the snow line, seemingly tiny trees making a velvet texture draped gently over some granite form. Wind whistling in various nooks and crannies of the car. Roll down the window. The silence of snowbanks melting onto a parking lot.
  
  In a month or so, this ridge will be mostly free of snow, and there will be people up here. It’s a popular destination for tourists and locals alike. Go to the top of the mountains and gaze and take pictures and feed the little birds and watch the other tourists.
  
  I can’t help but think of the time when my parents came to visit and we came up here. There’s a mile or so of paved trail that follows the ridge. Imagine me and my dad taking turns pushing my mom in her wheelchair down a paved path that’s right exactly on the ridge of a seriously high mountain range. Nothing at all to stop an out of control wheelchair from zooming right down into the valley… Mom was up for it. We asked her and asked her… “You cool with this?” She was. We got her back safely.

  • 3:12 am
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