8/9/25

The sound of the owl in the middle of the night is a distant probe, a pulse. In the east on the bottom of the horizon there are two new stars, maybe a planet. The sun rises closer to 0600 and sets at 2030 now. Timmy has been sitting on my lap in the early morning hours as I wait for my coffee and then I transfer him off when it’s ready. My phone says today it’s a new moon; it rises at 2100.

During the recent garage cleanup we came upon a flag of the Soviet Union Lily had in her room as part of her Communist/Socialist phase. Everyone regarded it with disdain (Dawn made a face) and with our new authoritarian government we worried about getting caught with it. But I hung it over an old boat hatch Dawn’s dad gave us, a heavy chunk of beautiful, heavily sealed wood we thought would make for a good table top someday. Because I’m no carpenter though I never could complete the project with proper legs so the hatch just leans against a back wall, heavy enough to kill a small child if it fell. I displayed the crimson flag there with its gold hammer and sickle.

And then we had a furnace service tech coming to the house for an annual PM check of the equipment and surely he’d see that flag so I thought better of it and took it down, folded it, and put it in the trash bin with the dog poop bags and cat litter and flies.

And then when the service tech came I recognized him from a prior visit and he was Russian. It didn’t dawn on me the irony of all this until well into the checkup as he dismantled the furnace and began his routine. As I squatted beside him I thought maybe I should get the flag out of the trash and offer it to him. Or what would he have said or thought if he saw it there. Of course I didn’t, I did nothing, but later when I mentioned it to Lily boy did I get an earful of what a bad idea that would have been. And frankly I’m not sure I understand so much why Russians would be embarrassed of the Soviet flag. Lily said it would be like giving a German a Swastika but not exactly, just kind of. Then I wondered with our authoritarian government if they’d see some of the embarrassing searches I’d done to access knowledge most people shouldn’t need to look up.

Like “why would Russians feel upset by the Soviet flag.” I still feel bad throwing the flag away, I’d think someone could use it. Flags just feel charged with a special weight; like a corpse they deserve a proper removal.

I also dragged all of my old climbing gear into the driveway which is saying something, because I’ve never gotten rid of anything and have been collecting gear since the late 90s, upgrading it over time. We must have about 15 backpacks of various sizes and half a dozen tents, sleeping bags, snow shoes, boots, and so on. The gear is really beautiful though. It looks like a museum of retro alpine climbing gear. It’s beautifully displayed, too. I mated all the sleeping bags with their colorful, branded storage totes and aligned them at good angles on the shelving. It’s a very satisfying look. I set aside a few things to donate but not much.

Chances are I won’t use the gear again until next spring, unless I get out in the winter. It’s been a long time though since I’ve had the nerve to snow camp. Now that I’m working again my outings would be limited to the weekends and I’m more prone to just laze about the house at the end of a work week. It’s kind of pathetic—I will have clocked just three, one-night overnights this year. Seems too early in the season to be calling it quits, September can be one of the best months for backpacking.

But work is an ocean and it’s hard for me to come out. This week I stuck my head in the void and had to actively pull back each day to not lose myself. I won’t get the chance to pull out soon. But it’s a very binary, all-or-nothing way of life, especially working for big tech and a large software company with vast riches to invest in the AI arms race. We are poking around in a large dark cave from the Tolkien book where the dragon’s asleep, picking through gold coins trying not to wake him. No, we’re the dragon.

The sun rise is a slow fade in and best experienced on a Saturday.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, Technology

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, journal writing, Memoir, pacific northwest