An apple a day keeps the doctor away...tons upon tons have the community coming in droves!

October 20

Cider-pressing Sunday!

Autumn never quite feels complete without the leaf piles, the cider mills, the apple orchards, the pumpkin carving...if I cannot get them all in, I better damn near get something in. So after my disappointing attempt at filling the void with the apple-less Onalaska Apple Festival, I was thrilled to hear that Gretchen's friend had just recently inherited an press that he was eager to put to use.

And so on Sunday, after a long weekend and late nights, Mary and I drove out to Gretchen's farm for a full day of sun-basking and cider-making and some delicious food (and attention-loving dogs) Most all of the apples were donated by the Orchard harvest of a family-friend and the gathering brought tons of the community together, many of them now familiar faces to me. Over the course of four or five hours, over 50 gallons of cider were pressed and bags upon bags of pulp dished out to fanatic applesauce makers. Every time we thought all the boxes of apples had been demolished, another would be brought out from some hidden nook.

Besides everyone getting to take home fresh cider and sample it there, Tim was heating some to save for a hard cider experiment. Ty, the new owner of the press, had been making wines and beers for years so I chatted him up a bit on his experience. Mary and I took home a gallon or more of our own and I decided to test a small portion in some hard cider making of my own. In my excitement and spontaneity of the decision however, I forgot I needed say....yeast. And so I am currently waiting on a small package. In the mean time, the bottles sit on my counter, perhaps already doing their own fermenty thing...

Oh, the perfect lazy sunday. And it was so wonderful to not be COLD outside!

Cheers!

Ty emptying a batch of cider remnants 

look at that Smile!  

The compost mound 

Yes Liz, I see you

Gretchen taking a stab at the cider making

Golden Juice of wonder!

Sleepless in (and out of) Seattle

I will get things done for America - 

to make our people safer, smarter and healthier

I will bring Americans together to strengthen our communities

Faced with apathy, I will take action. 

Faced with conflict, I will seek common ground. 

Faced with adversity, I will persevere

I will carry this commitment with e this year and beyond. 

I am an AmeriCorps member, and I will get things done! 

October 18 

If reading that felt uncomfortably indoctrinating, imagine two hours of that in a room full of 300-plus uniformed service members. On Friday at 5 am, Mary and I were groggily driving to meet our team in Morton for a mandatory field trip to Seattle for the Annual AmeriLaunch to show off our AmeriPride and get ''pumped'' for our year of service. Besides the tie-dye Cowlitz group, I would say we pulled together the best unconventional garb, dressing in lumber-jack plaid/flannel. We even contemplated a ''Crispus the Cispus Log'' team mascot as a jab for announcing our Cispus name wrong at rollcall last year but decided that may rock the boat a little too much. Ironically, they managed to get our name wrong again this year. As the rest of the teams were rising with their cheers and yelps, we were plotting what we would do - Logging roars? Axe-hacking sounds? - ''Syce-pass!'' No one stood. And then we realized our moment had been thwarted again. 

Luckily, none of us thought to highly of the event to begin with so not a lot was at stake. 

Despite the painstaking two hours of service stories and mispronunciations (several speakers fumbled with the silent p in the name AmeriCorps) it was totally worth a free trip to Seattle, with Cispus paying our gas. After the Launch, we all went out for Thai food and walked down for a jaunt through pikes place before half the team had to get back to their cars to be home for Afternoon obligations. Corey, Mary, Chris, Ainsley, Nora and I were the late car and made a full-out day of it. At pikes place, we discovered a gum wall far more impressive than the one back home in Ann Arbor (and oddly right outside of senior home - which, how cool would that be to live as a senior in pikes market?) 

                               

We strutted back and forth a few and a half times through the main market street (and I double-dipped on the best free Greek yogurt samples I have ever tasted) and I managed to hold up the group more than once by the sensory overload that has a tendency to slow me down. After sampling some delicious organics and jamming to a talented A-Capella RB/Soul group called A Moment In Time, we pulled ourselves out of the fray and went down to the Sculpture park, a new sight for me. Metal trees, giant erasers, A distinctly Calder red-ness, Eyeball chairs, giant bronze maze walls. Fun stuff. 

                                

The wandering began to wear on us afterwards and we made our way back to the car to shift gears and make some errands before leaving the city. Many of us wanted to see the spectacle that is the Seattle Mothership REI store so that was our first stop. The store itself is encapsulated in a giant Rainforesty grove of waterfall installations and gardens that follow along a zillion-story below-deck parking structure. The inside stores a floor to ceiling climbing wall and a giant shoe-testing sort of jungle gym thing. It was nifty to see but there was no way I was going to splurge on REI so I was ready to leave before anyone else and sat outside for a bit with Ainsley and Nora watching a cute dog who was also patiently waiting for his counterpart. 

The Outside of the massive REI

When everyone was finally pulled away from the store, we headed out of the downtown fray to the north part of seattle where I had hunted down a pcc market for my shopping needs and proceeded to spend way too much on local novelties and produce replenishment. Our last stop for the night was a snazzy Mexican restaurant and bar with the slogan Sin Well where we met up with Tino, a Seattle friend from our Challenge course weekend. Leaving a celebratory evening far past dark, we drove home under the stars, alongside a magnificent glowing Mt Rainier under a full Hunters moon. 

Mary and I did not arrive home until well past 11:30 and the next day, we were to be up again at 5 before the sun for....

Expanding Horizons!

October 19

Driving in a familiar groggy lull, back to Morton once again. We sat in a dark empty school parking lot waiting for cars of ambitious early-rising high school girls and a bus to take us to Centralia for the 20th annual Expanding Horizons Girls Science and Industry Expo Conference event. It was easy for me to come to the conclusion that my compromised sleep was worth-while. Since I am not in the schools during the week, the event was a great opportunity for me to meet girls that I had not yet had a chance to. The bunch that ended up coming were great and I enjoyed getting to bond with them and hear about their interests. I also found myself learning new things in all of the workshops as Mary and I hopped around throughout the day to take pictures of our students. I wrote up the following little summary after the event: 

''Everything in this world is made up of chemicals! And those are made up of?''

''Molecules!''

''Yes! And those are made up of?''

''Atoms!''

On Saturday morning in the auditorium of Centralia College, no one seemed to mind the early start to the day. Over 300 young girls were responding in unison as an enthusiastic woman named Jamie from the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry gave a charged presentation on states of matter. The girls were brought up on the stage for one fascinating experiment after another, from water that turned into jelly to balloons that shrunk in liquid nitrogen before unrolling themselves and coming back to life on the stage.

For the past 20 years, the American Association for the University of Women and TRIO - series of educational opportunity programs – has been collaborating to bring the Expanding Horizons conference to Lewis County. 

This annual event provides a unique opportunity for 7^th-9^th grade girls to get hands-on, experiential learning in a number of vocational fields within the Sciences. This year was said to be their biggest turn-out yet and they only hope that it can keep growing.

After the all-student presentation, the girls spread throughout the campus classrooms to participate in two 1-hour workshops of their choice, which they were able to sign up for when they registered. Between our group of 22 bright young girls from Whitepass, Morton and Mossyrock, our students plated the roles of physical therapists, veterinarians, CSI investigators, Architects, Jewelry designers, Firefighters, Computer engineers, conservationists and much more. At the end of the day, everyone seemed charged and inspired. Many of the girls were able to participate in a workshop that related to their future interests and some even found possibilities they had never considered. At a snack break between sessions, 9^th grader Hannah raved about parading around in a firefighter's attire. ''Are you interested in being a firefighter?'' I asked. ''Kind of. I'm a lot more interested now.''

In the past, it has been a struggle to get fundraising for buses to come all the way out here to get our students to this event. This is an invaluable opportunity that can ignite a life-changing spark in our young girls. It was thrilling to see so many come out this year. Next year, lets fill up the bus! 

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After we returned fro the event, Mary and I spent the afternoon at the Morton house watching Nightmare Before Christmas (and Napping) before an evening at the Teen Center. We finished off the night back at the Spruce where a local band was playing country/rock covers and we worked on our pool skills. 

Keeping on the sunny side, a surprisingly sunny sunny side.

It is happening. It is that turning point where adaptation is settling in and you realize that you are once again learning the lesson life repeatedly mantras: "there is no such thing as having me figured out". There is no "life by design", no "organized control" over its every detail.

Yet I am deceived every time, by a move or a new environment. "This is the fresh start. This is the perfect storm."

While I have not gone back and read some of my earlier posts, I seem to remember timidly raving about  my determined hiking regime - at least one a week - or my eager garden project for the expansive plot of weedy yard that I have.

Neither of those have happened quite as I imagined and the infrequency of my posting is indicative of the "swept up" symptom of life.

But let me clarify. I am not complaining. I am simply reevaluating. 

There are some perks to this reevaluation. My mold had been treating this somewhat like an extended special engagement. Every day felt like it had to produce something, be monitored, be recorded. I am glad to say that the busyness that has kept me away from writing has been a well-balanced dose of work and play.

The next couple of months will be enveloped in celebratory holiday garb, keeping us on our feet with logistics of charitable activities and wintery field trips. Now has been the time for relationship and community. This is nothing to be put on a pedestal. This is life.

In these next posts, lets get up to speed on the journey : )

October 14

From the evidence of these last two weeks, I am pretty sure Washingtonians lie about their horrendous drabbery just to scare away a potential overpopulous. Until yesterday (the 27th) we had not a drop of rain fall on our heads, let alone a lack of light. If I could, I would have demanded a state-wide work hiatus with mandatory hiking but with the reality of our busy schedules, we were hard-pressed to find time for much. So on a sunny Monday before Open Gym, Mary and I got an early start and drove out to the trail head of Glacier Lake Trail #89. The two of us had bounced trail ideas off one another for over an hour the night before, finding routes that were either too long or most likely snowed in by now. We had been hesitant to resort to Glacier Lake because all of the reviews I had read were under-enthused at best, deterring at worst. Hikers warned of wash-outs and poorly cleared paths and an unimpressive destination point. But with little else to go on, I was not about to waste a gorgeous day.

The forest road itself was one of the better maintained I had been on (many around here involve pothole dodging that feels like it could be made into a high-action video game) but sure enough, about a 1/2 mile from the trail head, the road was marked off with big orange cones where the road had been washed out from a very established-looking water-flow route down the mountain side. On our hike up to the start, we encountered another wash out in its path just above it that left a narrow little clif-side for us to follow. When we were met at the trail sign with a notice left from the previous day warning "VERY WASHED OUT. UNSAFE." We raised our eyebrows one last time...before heading in.

The trail was beautiful. Hilly and muddy in spots, sure. But nothing remotely close to what I would consider warranting an urgent, capitalized UNSAFE (certainly nothing nearly as unsafe as this: http://melissamittentomountains.blogspot.com/2013/06/plunging-into-porkies.html). Unlike many of the trails I'd been on in the area, this one went deep into the woods along a valley river, never ascending or descending for too long but snaking up and down, bringing us to the water's edge and back into fairy-tale moss-lands. It was an exciting change from the many shared ATV trails. While the steep lifts certainly got wearing, the surrounding were so varied that I never really fell into a fatigued trance. This trail had the most mushroom varieties I had seen in one area by far and contrary to the bland reviews, I thought it presented some of the most beautiful fall foliage. the first half was mostly encapsulated in shadey groves of thick, valley woods of damp dark greens. It then gradually opened up to rock "fields" covered in the brightest limey moss I'd ever seen. Small deciduous trees sprinkled the landscape and filtered the sun through reds and oranges that warmed the sight of everything around us. It was the perfect time in the trail - just about hitting one hill too many - that gave us that last burst of excitement to get to a clearing of rocks. Mary went ahead as I was taking pictures and from the next bend, shouted for joy. "I FOUND THE LAKE!"

people lied about the destination as well! Just before the lakeside, we came across a small camp shaded by a giant knotty tree, complete with a little fire pit. The lake itself was lined with the bright silver of bare, felled trees and fog rolled off the edges up into the line of sun. We sat for a good hour before heading back, with plenty of time to spare before Open Gym.

back at the trail head, we left a second opinion so as to ensure others didn't miss out on the experience.