2021, well, you’ll see lots of pictures of doggies, and Georgia and loved ones, and a few other things…and a slightly haggard looking me, the mark of successful myeloma treatment in 2018-19, for which I’m grateful to remain super healthy and in full remission. Yes, another COVID year, but a rich one, and such abundance in my life!
Welcome! Get ready to see a lot of doggies, and Georgia and other loved ones. Know that I remain healthy following myeloma treatment in 2018-19, just a bit grizzly looking given previous chemo, but I remain in remission. Here we go with 2021 in review!: this one is of me riding home from work one of many times.
Logs have become a new addition to my slideshows, after that black oak saga of 2020. In January we yarded some large short incense cedar logs, destined to become benches in our Proctor memorial area on the forest in Canyonville. (Why we have these logs is a long story, involving neighbor litigation threats...)
Lewis & Clark resumed in early 2021 with the opportunity for outdoor classrooms, such as this one I routinely used. Yes, it got cold!...and dark. But it was good to be in person in these enduring COVID times.
Portland endured days of snow, ice, and no power in February, which made the house pretty!...but cooold.
Georgia and her Jeep powered us to downtown so we could see some lights and humanity in the midst of the storm.
Also in February, Joy talked us into planting an orchard on our land in Canyonville...over two dozen fruit trees for starters, apple/cherry/peach. The good news is they survived the terribly hot 2021 summer, courtesy of an automated drip system.
Georgia and I continue to live our tiny lives in the tiny house, 12 legs total. In March her sister Roxy visited from CA.
Speaking of our tiny home, Georgia and I added a lawn in late March!...but alas, lawns on shady PDX clay soils prove less successful than our Canyonville orchard, though all looks great in this early photo.
Here's evidence of the orchard's early growth in Canyonville...plus a few of the thousands of tulips Joy and Bongani planted in the field.
If Joy has learned one thing about planting pretty flowers in Canyonville, it's that deer don't eat daffodils.
Joy's predilection for pretty flowers manifested in our house front area in Portland as well.
Georgia's mom Andrea visited in May, and we visited their relatives in Hood River and had a nice hike overlooking the Columbia River.
Speaking of hikes: Lita (our 1+ year old) loves them...even when fully packed.
Georgia and I made it to Kojosho spring camp in late May above Albuquerque, New Mexico, where we all celebrated coming back together (safely) in person. I honor the long dedication of Mr. and Ms. Absher to share with us this place, and the deep lessons one can learn via Kojosho.
Georgia and others lining up (and showing appreciation) during spring Kojosho camp. Yes, we are a bit black belt heavy!...that made Georgia special.
If our ADU is a mini-me of the house, the bike shed I built over the summer is a mini-mini-me. Here I'm envisioning the roofline.
Two bikes, two bike trailers, two two-leggeds, two four-leggeds biking above the Columbia River in June.
A transition: the aging manufactured home I moved to Canyonville in 2002, occupied primarily by caretakers over the years, is now gone, as we transition to an RV-based caretaker in future.
We spent a lovely 4th of July near Chehalis, WA with sister Mary and Marshall family. Here Bob has found an adoring companion...or was it Lita who found the adoring companion?
Our close friends Bub and Phil in Canyonville and their new four-legged, Taco!...kinda tiny in this picture from August, but now a bit bigger and full of fury. It was a long, hot, smoky summer in Canyonville; this was one of the better days.
Georgia grew beautiful things in the container garden this summer, including some super tall sunflowers, so tall they eventually fell over...so we adorned our table (the old Proctor family dining table) with them.
A new drinking establishment in the neighborhood actually has an old connection with our house!: it's the original Universalist Church of the early 1900s, once quite a happening place, and one of its early superintendents owned our house and had frequent gatherings here...so say some old Oregonian newspapers. (The stained glass was a later, Metropolitan Community Church, version.)
Speaking of our old house, things from the past keep popping up every time we open a wall...here's some old newspaper from way back when.
I definitely am not out performing in these COVID times...hard on musicians. But I do keep polishing that music stone. One good place to sing is the Lewis & Clark music building practice rooms...a nice transition in the later afternoon.
Our family, including Georgia, Elise and her boyfriend Craig, and Joy and Bongani. The occasion: Elise's birthday!...gosh, our baby is well into her 30s.
One of several car camp outings Georgia and I took in fall, this one in late September to our CBarC Ranch friends Ty and Bob in Powell Butte, where they put us up on their land. Lita later herded sheep!...sort of.
We were grateful to host mostly Kojosho black belts at our annual West Coast Kojosho fall camp in Council Crest Park, PDX in early October. Camp was small (no Kojosho PE class in fall), but good for us all to meet and rediscover the first steps one learns as a white belt...and relearns as a black belt.
Another car camp took me and Georgia to the middle Klamath River in northern CA in October, where we met with Karuk tribal leaders and continued a conversation we started last spring in our environmental engagement course at Lewis & Clark. We are grateful for their hospitality, and honor their perseverence.
Georgia and the doggies camping on the middle Klamath...
...and Mary smiling back at me from the Klamath River. (I'm holding the old girl so she doesn't take a plunge.)
The girls now back in Portland in our lovely leafy fall...
...and Lita with me on our daily AM run/workout to Irving Park near our house.
We were so very lucky to have Gerda Carmichael and her partner Dick visit us in Portland! Gerda was my host during myeloma treatment in Birmingham, AL in late 2018/early 2019. Here the two artists. Gerda and Elise, talk art.
Phil and Bub at El Paraiso in Canyonville, where we frequently meet up to eat...
...and a fuzzy pic of our (mostly) graduating ENVS seniors meeting up in Portland to discuss their impending capstone projects...we'll be working together on them this spring. We have a bumper crop of graduating seniors this year, nearly 40...double our largest class ever.
Georgia and I made it to her relatives in Hood River often this year, and I'd frequently run Lita by this sad little memorial of a boy who didn't live past ten. He now gets to face the Columbia...batter up!
Thanksgiving #1 with Georgia's relatives (and yes, our omnipresent doggies) in Hood River...they have been so generous to us this year...
...and our second Thanksgiving the next day with my family. Here Bongani and Craig carve the turkey I roasted.
Our second Thanksgiving. Two are twice as abundant as one!...and one Thanksgiving is plenty of abundance...we are grateful.
So, if I didn't get out and play much this year, I certainly got a chance to hear some good music when it popped up. Here is my friend Shelly Rudolph's partner Chance and band at his belated CD release party in late November.
What a blessing to my health and inspiration to regularly ride my bike up the Willamette River!...this light show from early December.
A few years ago Lyndia Hammer finalized a management plan for Proctor Memorial Forest in Canyonville, and in fall we launched fuels management (mostly thinning of smaller trees), given so many scary fires in the area. Here Lyndia and our current (and great) Alder Creek Community Forest Americorps worker, Kobe Rossi, are inspecting the work in early December.
A rather grizzled but happy me after yarding some of the downed madrone in December, all part of the aforementioned fuels reduction, for potential milling as our Canyonville common house floor. Much more needed of course, but a start.
This large madrone blew down awhile ago in the fuels reduction area, so I bucked it up to haul...but alas, the critters got into it before I did, so most of the middle is soft.
At the base of another madrone blowdown was this lovely lion's mane mushroom, which I brought home and Elise cooked up!...it tasted great. All these Canyonville-Portland connections!
Right before Christmas, Georgia and I headed to the coast near Lincoln City to catch up with some of her friends. Here is happy old dame Mary, now nearly 15 years old, enjoying her time on the beach...
...and here are her friends Max and Sam and mom. As usual, Lita is in the happy middle of it all.
Elise, Joy, and Craig setting up the house for the Christmas celebration!...Santa was good to us, and apparently fits just fine down a gas fireplace chimney.
For my birthday this year—the Beatles song birthday, folks—Georgia and I stayed in a cabin near Molalla and converted her pack into a Mary carrier so she could hike with us.
So, here we are at the end of 2021, somehow making it in spite of, well, nearly everything. We have learned so much about ourselves, mostly hard but good stuff, being alongside each other at this special time in our lives. I'm wishing each of you love, growth, and abundance in 2022!