Ready or not, here we come!  We are moving to Aspen Ridge Ranch today. Leaving Bend as our home base until September, or beyond. We’ll know it about 3 hours if we are able to drive all the way to the cabin or will be packing a household of goods through the woods. Wish us luck!

Well, we made it. In fact the trip in was a bit anti climactic. There were still a few deep drifts of snow in the middle section of our 3-mile long driveway but they hugged the shadowy north edge of the road, lieaving enough room on the one side to keep half the tires on dirt. Bob went first in the 4-runner with the four-wheel drive engaged. Although the drifts were as much as three feet deep, it was soft snow and with taking a run at it he could blast through. I followed in the van, loaded with most our gear, two dogs, and Mazzy riding on the front dash to make sure I was doing everything right. It was easy getting through the mud and snow by staying in the tracks Bob laid. I was only nervous for two of the drifts but they weren’t more than 30 yards long so I figured with the immense weight of a Chevy Van I would be able to get up enough speed to power through them. As it turned out the snow was so soft it gave way with ease and the mud was actually a bit more of a factor. The only thing that really took some time was clearing the drive of the 40 or so small trees Bob had used to get himself unstuck during his last attempt.

So, we drove right to the cabin and found everything in good condition. The animals were esctatic to be “home”; especially Mazzy who went ferral for until 10 PM when she decided she’d prefer to sleep in a ball on her down comforter in the safety of the loft. Rio and Chami both went swimming.

We fell easily into old habits. As soon as we arrived I vacuumed up dead flies that were convening across the carpet, the table, and just about every nook and cranny. Bob set to off-loading the vehicles. I next started a fire as it was only 50 in the cabin, then fetched two buckets of water from the high-flowing muddy river to get them settling to provide household water for everything except drinking. Once we were settled in we took a nice walk up onto the ridge to get a birds-eye view of the Yamsi Valley. It was like surveying your kingdom after a long journey away. We took our first river baths before retiring to the cabin for the rest of the night and it was “thrilling” as usual.

Yep, we are home at last.

Our visit to the wilderness was just a tease. We know now that we have made the transition to our cabin in the Yamsi Valley but there is to be an ongoing transition of lifestyle and spirit.

We drove back to Bend before noon yesterday because I had a photography show scheduled for the May Art Walk at the Birkenstocks downtown. As luck would have it my good friend Loren let us stay at her home in Bend while she was out of town. Now that we have rented our Bend house, we are homeless in the city. We quickly settled in, washed away the dust and solitude of our one-night stay at the ranch, and hustled around town making last minute preparations for the show. We had to borrow some easels, go to the storage room at the Bend house to pick up displays, materials and other necessities, then a quick visit to Mom and Dad’s where we’ve got my best photos stashed in their spare closet, finally a mad rush to get set up before 5 PM and the flood of tourists and locals out for a stroll through the streets of Bend’s art/café/boutique district.

The one thing I soaked up during our flash visit to the ranch was how relative time is and that it doesn’t really do much good to rush. It certainly doesn’t help things to stress or panic about somewhat trivial things. So, we were a tad late getting everything arranged but it didn’t seem to matter to the store staff, who were wonderful, nor the few folks who were getting an early start on a spring evening with art and friends. I managed to keep taking solid, deep breaths and telling myself it would all work out just fine. I never got stressed or flustered, which is a change for me, and by the time the crowds really started to build I was happy and proud of our little display and I was into being “on”. The hermit Dawn was napping while the social Dawn was in her element. I must have talked with nearly 100 people during the four hours I was at Birkenstock. The store was constantly jammed with folks but it never got overwhelming. Bob, as usual, hung out in the background ready to run and get another photo from the car to replace one that had just sold, or figure out how to package another piece that sold in its frame and needed to make it to Southern California with its new owners without getting dinged.

Unlike the April Art Walk I didn’t sell ANY greeting cards, which was disappointing. But I did notice, once again, that since I was paid so many compliments by a wide range of people that a growing confidence with my return to photography was settling in. Oh, and did I mention I ended up selling nearly $800 worth of my large pictures!! 

By the time we wrapped up for the night it was after 10 PM. I hadn’t eaten much for lunch and hadn’t had time for any dinner. Bob was in the van, I in the Honda, so we agreed to meet back up at Loren’s house after Bob loaded the last of the goods in the van. When he showed up with two salads and 3 slices of pizza from Pizza Mondo I cracked up because I’d stopped by the same place on my way home and somehow we missed each other. Combined with the one large salad and 2 slices of pizza I’d brought home we had enough to keep us fed for the next two days.

I felt completely exhausted all day today, almost hung over even, though I don’t think eating two pounds of salad near midnight will cause that feeling. After taking the dogs for a walk at the park right behind Loren’s house I settled in to get caught up with work and writing.

In the evening we went over to Curtis and Sheri’s house to welcome them home. They are remarkable travelers. They’d only been back in their house one night, after two months in India, and it already seemed like they hadn’t ever left. We walked over to Karen’s house for dinner and to hear stories of India and beyond. Between Art Walk last night and our small dinner party tonight, I think I’ve gotten my fill of socializing for a bit. Tomorrow it is back to the ranch and this time we’ll have the space to really settle in.

Well, I’ll have the space to really settle in, that is (see May 3).  Surf’s up. Bob and I unpacked the van; then Bob repacked it with his surf boards, wetsuits, lap top, and Chami, headed for the central Oregon coast. I know how I get when I’m not walking and immersing myself in nature. Bob goes through the same withdrawals when he is away too long from the ocean.

Although Terra Com work has picked up a good bit–and somewhat unexpectedly with the two new publisher clients adding on more and more demands–I still managed to find the rhythm of the Yamsi Valley this past week. I’ve been alone for the week, just Rio and Mazzy for company. The birding has been incredible as has the weather, warming with every passing day. I’ve made sure to fit in my morning sunrise prayer at the dock each day. I’ve biked or hiked Aspen Ridge area all week, reconnecting with Sentinel Creek, Blue Jay Springs, the old growth Ponderosas, and the coyote families that are ubiquitous. Five evenings in a row I’ve kayaked up and down the river watching spring unfold along its banks. There are two pair of Wood Ducks nesting on the ranch, along with a pair of Buffleheads (which is unusual), and Cinnamon Teal and Mallards, which are to be expected. No trout or mayflies have made their presence known, though I suspect the resident fish are lurking beneath the cut-banks, and mayfly larvae are getting anxious with their lives wallowing in the mud. It is supposed to get warmer this weekend so perhaps they will emerge. Only a few mosquitoes buzz about in the evenings, just enough to remind one it is spring in the high country.

Bob came home last evening, just a few hours after Loren and her friend–and my new friend, Eve–left.

The girls had come by on Saturday evening after spending the previous two days birding with a few other serious birders over in the Summer Lake area. We spent Saturday evening talking and making a quick, late meal, then they went to sleep in the bunkhouse. On Sunday we took a big hike and paddled some. We then whiled away a nice, cool evening sitting alongside the river watching dusk settle in. I liked Eve a bunch. She’s super fit and in her late 40’s, a real outdoors woman. And smart to boot. She didn’t hesitate at all to take a bath in the river, even at night or first thing in the morning. Her willingness to do so, matched with mine, kind of put the pressure on Loren to join us.

It was good to have company, though I wasn’t disappointed when at first they didn’t show up at the expected time. Two days later when they headed back to Bend, I was really glad they’d come.

I’m so excited that Bob is getting an unexpected blast of late spring surf. He took off again after a brief visit home. He worked his ass off while he was here for a few days helping me get some of the bigger, heavier tasks done. Although Chami has been acting a bit puny the last week or so we decided it would be best for her to go with Bob because she just loves going to the ocean on surf trips. She’s been his constant surfing companion for more than 12 years and though she spends most of her time sleeping in the van nowadays, she still runs on the beach, digs endless pits in the sand, and waits patiently for Bob to come in from the water.

I’ve only had one day by myself this week as Loren and Sheri came down this afternoon. The three of us had planned a camping/birding/hiking trip to the Warner Valley and Hart Mt. for the weekend but with this crazy heat wave crashing down on us I suggested we table those plans and stay at the ranch with the cool river at our beck and call. They both agreed that basing at the ranch and going on some outings from here would be the best. I’m glad to be staying put and to have a distraction. I’ve spent far too much of this lovely week inside at my desk working on TC business with very little time for writing, photography, or just hanging out. Heck, you would think I had a regular, full-time job. I did manage a few sunbathing/reading sessions on the dock. I am so loving this novel, Shantaram. I’m pretty sure it is going to make it into my Top 10 favorite books of all time. My butt is sunburned so I guess it can’t be all work and no play.

Sheri and I took a nice long walk, though it was awfully hot. Loren stayed at the cabin to read the NY Times.  Around 4 PM Loren was kind of complaining about the mosquitoes and I was thinking she was being a bit of a sissy since they weren’t bothering me and they haven’t really been bad this last week. But with the super heated day I concurred that they might get worse as the setting sun created an environment more to their liking so we dug out an old mosquito gazebo, since Bob has yet to put up my big, netted outdoor office. I agreed to the plan of setting it up because it usually only takes about 10 minutes. After an hour of struggling I realized Bob is always the team leader when we’ve erected it in the past, and I’m the grunt. This time we had three, strong-minded pretty capable women happy to take the team leader role. Ironically I backed off right away because figuring out which poles went where seemed like a puzzle and I’m not good at that sort of thing. A half hour into it we were all pretty frustrated and might have given up, though no one voiced the possibility. However, the insects were really starting to flourish and we decided it was rather comical that we couldn’t figure the dang thing out. Eventually, I solved the puzzle and we got it up. I believe it ended up taking an hour but we did spend a lot of time laughing. There was room for Loren’s double-thick foam bed (usually used for our fly fishing camp), and a few lawn chairs. Thank goodness…the mosquitoes were ferocious so we spent the rest of the day, until deep, cool dark, hanging out in the mosquito gazebo eating dinner and talking and reading.

I’d been in quite a manic mood most of the afternoon and early evening, somewhat intending to party. But just after dinner Bob called to tell me Chami had gone missing. She’s never done anything like this before and we were both pretty frantic. It was a buzz kill so I was content to spend a quiet evening with the girls. Bob said she walked off sometime during the middle of the night on Thursday. He had spent the entire day walking and driving around looking for her; then he was certain she would come back to his campsite by dinner but she didn’t. Surely she’ll come back to him while he sleeps tonight.

I drove off with Sheri and Loren early this morning with three kayaks strapped to the top of Loren’s Outback. We drove to the northwest side of upper Klamath Lake to paddle one of the loops of the watery nature trail that is marked with signs through slews and marshland. It was a spectacular day, hot, blue skied, void of humanity except for us three women. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to enjoy it as much as I should have because it was always in the back of my mind that Chami hadn’t shown up this morning. I promised myself I wouldn’t let this bother me for the day, I wanted to keep positive thoughts for a while longer, but it is going on three days of her missing and Bob says it is scorching hot at the beach. There are plenty of lakes and streams but where could she be?

We got back to the ranch just after dusk. I called Bob, still now sign of Chami. He has put up 100 flyers around town and campgrounds. He’s checked with authorities and has a number of surf buddies and fellow campers on the look out for her. Did she run off to die?  She didn’t’ seem that sick. Did someone pick her up and take her?  Did she get disoriented and lost?  Oh Chami girl, where are you?

Still no Chami this morning. Sheri and I took a long, hot walk after a lazy breakfast, Loren stayed behind to study for a biology test. The girls had planned to leave early but it was so hot they stuck around until after lunch. They had brought their bikes and Sheri wanted to make sure it wasn’t a waste, so she and I went biking for an hour. In the heat of the day we cooled off in the river, then they packed and left. Of course a bit of melancholy floated like mist above the river, and through our hearts. They both love Chami too. Who doesn’t, of those who know her.

It was a very tearful afternoon as Bob and I talked on the phone and decided he had done all that he could to find her and that surely, she must be dead. There is so much scrub brush along the dunes and though he looked under hundreds of them, he never found her body. We have suspected for a while that she wasn’t doing so well, and we don’t even mind if she has died, but not knowing what happened to her will haunt us for a long while. With heavy hearts we stayed connected by telephone, as Bob drove away from the Oregon coast, without his surf buddy.

What a roller coaster ride Chami took us on. Bob is back, again, after coming home shrouded in sadness Sunday night only to get a call Monday morning from a park ranger telling us they had found Chami. She had wandered into a campground fully ten miles south from where she had strayed. The night before she got lost Bob hadn’t been able to get her to walk more than a few hundred yards to the ocean jetty. Her hips and arthritis seemed to be getting the better of her. How then, did she walk ten miles in 95 degree heat? 

Bob left immediately to get her, though the campground hosts who were caring for her encouraged him not to hurry since they were enjoying her company so much. Chami is just one of those incredibly smart loving dogs that knows how to communicate with folks on human terms so most people come to adore her pretty quickly. Plus she has reddish blond ears the texture of velvet that beg to be stroked.

Bob had planned to spend the night after collecting our girl and surfing some, and I encouraged him to do so since the waves were still good. Instead he just felt compelled to bring Chami back to Aspen Ridge Ranch for a family reunion. About 2 hours from home he got too sleepy so he and Chami spent a warm, star spangled night camping along the Umpqua River. Now, we are all back together.

We are worried about our Golden Girl. She doesn’t seem dehydrated, though she defiantly lost weight, but she is rather dazed, not quite all together, and she can barely walk. She hobbled a few feet to the edge of the river to sleep, the wobbled her way to the cabin or her dinner bowl, but she is traumatized at the least. Although Chami has the most advanced communications I’ve ever seen in a dog, she’ll never be able to tell us what the hell happened. I’m so glad to have her home but it is such an emotionally draining time with her right now. Bob and I cried and worried so much on Sunday night, had a wake for her, said good bye. Yet, neither of us could really grieve the way we wanted to because we never even knew if she was dead. Now she is home and obviously sick. Did she go off to die after all then changed her mind? It may be that it would have been best for her to let go of her body and let her soul fuse with the Oneness of All. I hate to think of the suffering she went through, and may continue to go through. We are going to go to Bend as soon as we can see the vet. Perhaps then we’ll figure out what is going on.

We drove to Bend yesterday to house-sit for my parents who are off to California to visit family. We took Chami to the vet yesterday and though she has improved immensely from her wandering off ordeal she still seems to be in a lot of pain. Dr. Bertram, Susan, took blood and we’ll get those results next week. Otherwise she felt Chami was recovering fine. Her lymph nodes and other cancer indicators were okay. The biggest issue was pain management so we’ve upped her anti-inflammatory and added a mild opiode pain killer.

I’ve decided to remain in Bend through the Memorial weekend of the nasty weather and to take advantage of having a place to stay in town. The hot running water is just too much of an invitation after two weeks at the ranch. Bob, on the other hand hasn’t spent much time at the ranch so he is going down there tomorrow to keep an eye on things during a busy weekend when we often have to deal with trespassers. And he’ll get some quality time alone in the mountains.

When last I wrote we were just moving back home, to Aspen Ridge Ranch, then silence befell this journal. Was that because life at the ranch has been so full of adventure, rich in spiritual communing with nature and the cosmos, ladened with quiet time reading and sunbathing, deluged with ranch chores, just so chock-a-block with wild happenings that I haven’t had time to tell the stories?

Alas, the answer is no. Instead a few things changed with my book publicity business. Garth Stein’s new book, The Art Of Racing In The Rain, launched and is well on its way to becoming a huge national bestseller. Along with that Terra Com has been getting much more work from him than we expected. In addition, we started working directly for two publishers, a model I’ve been moving toward for some time, and with it comes more money and more work. My two associates have not been able to keep up with it all so I’ve basically been sitting at a computer, with my telephone headset atop my head, and working for 8 to 10 hours a day for weeks on end. I keep telling myself it is okay, “make hay while the sunshines,” but there hasn’t been much end in site. I’ve turned down a number of potential new clients, and several are pending and may be ones that are just too interesting, or profitable, to decline. I keep raising my fees, hoping to discourage new clients, but I guess I’ve been charging too little for years and even as I raise my rates, I still keep getting new requests.

We chose to move to the ranch because we wanted to save money, or more precisely, we wanted to live more simply and with fewer expenses so that we didn’t have to work at paying jobs so much of our lives. There is a definite pattern here that has established itself over the past 10 years. Whenever I decide to live true to my desires, to not worry about making money or putting effort toward that, to simplify…then really good money-making opportunities fall at my feet. How can I turn away good books to work with when my hourly rate is now twice what it was just a year ago. The theory is that the more new clients I take on, that are locked in at the higher rates, then I should make more money while working fewer hours. Unfortunately I feel an obligation to stick with my old, long term clients who aren’t having to pay the higher rates, so the overall effect is that I just have lots more work to do, and a bit more money coming from the work.

I don’t know what it is about me but I get really depressed when I’m working at something that is only mildly fulfilling, for 40 hours a week. I realize most everyone in the US has to work at least this hard, and most and jobs that aren’t as cool or rewarding as mine, but I just want to write, do my photography, hike, bike, paddle, read, garden, think, talk, put effort toward relationships, go birding, and spend an hour or two a day sunbathing on my dock watching the water skeeters dance on the river. I’m not lazy. I go from dawn to dusk, but work that isn’t my passion is mundane. And when I’m mired in the mundane I start feeling like I’m wasting my life. It is so short as it is. I start having anxiety attacks, I get depressed, I can’t drag myself from bed, I eat and collapse at 8 PM to watch movies and escape reality. I love reality…when I’m living in it well.

I finally lost the will to keep at it after spending most of Saturday–of Memorial weekend–working, working, working. But since I’d been in Bend for the week, house sitting for my parents, I had to spend all day Sunday cleaning their home, then all day Monday cleaning our Bend house getting it ready for the next renter. I’m a good, meticulous housekeeper, but two days in a row of 6+ hours of house cleaning and I felt more mired in the mundane than ever.

Good thing I stayed in town. I’ve now got a bad cold. Not surprising considering this cool, cloudy, and often wet weather that drags on and on. This, combined with too much work, cleaning two houses, and not having my neti pot and homeopathics to ward off germs and boost my immune system. I did treat myself to a set of brand new, 500 thread count sheets. They are so luxurious. I have been using hand-me-down sheets from family and friends for years. So I’ve spent half of each day sleeping and trying to get well, but enjoying my time in bed at least. I haven’t been able to walk much because I’m achy and stuffed up but it hasn’t mattered too much for the dogs since Chami hasn’t wanted to walk much, and our neighbors have been taking Rio for long walks with them. I love being in my Bend home again and am really sad we gave it up for the summer. However, I know we wouldn’t be able to afford a nice trip abroad this fall/winter without doing it so I’ll just have to be content with a rough log cabin in the mountains and cold baths in the river.

Chami is not well. Though her pain and mood seem better since adding the drugs, and though her blood work came back looking totally healthy, she has seemed lethargic the past two days and today she wasn’t much interested in eating and she vomited last night.  I’m so glad Bob is back in town since he is the vomit cleaner upper in the family. Also, I found a golf ball sized lump on her belly while I was looking for ticks that she picked up during her little adventure at the coast.  The lump is deeper into her gut than others, not something you can see like the benign fatty cysts puffy up just under the surface of the skin. I spoke to the vet this morning and she thinks the new pain regime might be causing her stomach irritation so we’ll stop them for now and see how she reacts. I described the lump to her on the phone (since they didn’t have room for an appointment) but she didn’t think it was anything to worry about. I’m not so sure but we’ll try this other drug regime for now.