I'm still here!

One of my favorite rap songs ever is Cypress Hill’s all-time classic “Insane in the Brain”. Yeah, you definitely know this song. It is so iconic that it was featured in an episode of The Simpsons that spawned a meme that is still going, and it is so iconic that I heard it at the dry cleaners just two days ago when I went to pick up a wool blanket that I needed cleaned. So without any further ado, it would be lame for me to mention it and not link to its equally iconic video:

I will also say this: it is literally impossible to be as high as Cypress Hill was when they recorded this song, and the album Black Sunday. Even listening to this song should give you an idea of that. This is also an album that features the songs “I Wanna Get High”, “Legalize It”, and “Hits From The Bong”. I enjoy cannabis quite a bit, but I’m not sure it’s possible to love it as much as Cypress Hill does. It’s almost quaint, even charming when you think about it.

ANYWAY, we live in a world that increasingly seems detached from previously agreed upon standards of sanity. It seems like so many people, and so many of our governments (especially ours here in the US) have truly gone insane in the old membrane. I’m not going to bother giving examples here, because we all know how truly awful things seem right now. Every day feels like another new low, as yet another headline or story that would have seemed inconceivable even ten years ago, takes place. I’m not just talking about the US or its government right now either - it truly seems like everything is coming apart at the seams across the globe.

So how does a person keep their sanity right now? One day at a time. I’ve been oh so busy lately: in addition to my day job that keeps me very busy, we might be going on strike soon, adding another layer of stress and complexity to my life. Beyond this, my volunteering with the Mazamas keeps me busy during my free time. I led a hike for the Mazamas on Sunday, January 25 along the Deschutes River Trail that was absolutely lovely:

We even saw a porcupine! This was one of the coolest animal sightings I’ve ever had, as porcupines are not often seen during the day, being mostly nocturnal. I’ve seen a lot of wildlife in my time in the outdoors, among them a cougar near Badger Creek, a lynx in Hells Canyon, and quite a few black bears, but this ranks near the top. I took a few pictures, but they aren’t great. Here’s one of them:

As my mom tells me, I’ve always liked being busy. I used to keep myself extremely busy as a strategy to deal with my mental health issues, among them depression and anxiety. I was diagnosed with ADHD last year and that helped me understand why I chose this strategy; for awhile, it worked. But over time, keeping myself extremely busy, always doing things, led me to slowly lose my ability to regulate my emotions. In short, I went insane in the old membrane.

I don’t do that anymore. And so, when I feel like I’ve overcommitted myself, I take a step back and make sure that I’m not pushing myself too hard. My mental health is too important to jeopardize. I take more time to relax, and I take more time to just enjoy my life and the little pleasures that bring me joy: sipping coffee in the morning, listening to records, reading books at night while rain pounds against the windows of our house (it’s been a weird winter, we haven’t actually had that much rain), watching old reruns of Law & Order, and going for hikes every weekend. You would expect all of this from me, but I’ve prioritized it so much more over the past five years. I need it. We all do.

Last weekend I took a short overnight trip to Detroit (Oregon, not Michigan) to go hike a couple of old favorites in the Majestic Mount Jefferson Wilderness: Marion Lake and Pamelia Lake. As mentioned above, it’s been a strange winter, and our snowpack is at critically low levels. It is possible to hike in the mountains right now, in places that are normally covered in many feet of snow. It is disconcerting, but like every other serious hiker, I’ve been taking advantage of it.

I visited Marion Lake on Friday. This is an old favorite, a hike I first did in 1994, when I was growing up in Salem. The hike starts with a leisurely stroll through the woods (though a little less leisurely, since there were several huge trees down over the trail that required some scrambling and scooting on my butt just to get around them), before climbing gradually to Lake Ann and then on to Marion Lake. As always, I made a visit to Marion Falls on my way to the lake:

I then made my way to Marion Lake, where I had to plow through a little snow and down to the south lakeshore for the spectacular view of Mount Jefferson across the lake:

Because the main trail to Marion Lake doesn’t pass a view of Mount Jefferson, it isn’t widely known that such a view exists. But there is a view, and it’s real and it’s spectacular. I did not see the otters that live in Marion Lake this time, but they do exist and you should keep an eye out for them if you visit the lake.

The forecast called for rain on Saturday so I decided to hike to Pamelia Lake and see how much I could do before the rain moved in. I always get nostalgic when I visit Pamelia Lake, because it was one of the very first places I ever went hiking as a kid. Here are some photos from that day:

That was a hard day, because I hiked 10 miles with 2,700 feet of elevation gain, the last mile to the summit of Grizzly Peak through deep snow - and I was only two weeks shy of my tenth birthday. I remember whining and complaining and asking if we could turn around, but we kept going, and I made it, hence the photo above with my fist raised.

So coming back to Pamelia Lake always brings me back to that day. Almost 35 years later, I was older than my stepdad was when we did this hike, and I certainly felt old hiking in to Pamelia Lake. As it turns out, I was getting sick. But I made it to the lake, where I found clouds gathering, and threatening rain:

Pamelia Lake isn’t the most attractive lake in the Mount Jefferson Wilderness; it might actually be the least attractive lake, to be honest. But the forest on the hike into the lake, and around the lake, are as gorgeous as you’ll find almost anywhere:

Despite feeling far from my best, I was very happy to do this hike. I hadn’t done it in years, not once since I finished 101 Hikes in the Majestic Mount Jefferson Region at the end of 2015. I am planning on going back again at least once this year to hike to the summit of Grizzly Peak, and possibly twice to hike into Hunts Cove. You can see the joy on my face in this selfie I took just before I finished the hike:

It was wonderful to get away, to do two favorite hikes in the off-season, and to get to write several more pages of my novel that’s going to take me years to finish. I am very grateful to have the time.

I learned long ago that you need to seek out joy in the world when you can, because we all certainly need it right now. Drop me a line and let me know what you’re doing to manage your stress in these crazy, insane in the membrane times we live in!

Cheers,

Matt