Took the Iron Gate trail but varied my approach by going the reverse direction up the Devil’s Backside. Discharged the bear spray I got in Montana in 2018 to make sure it still worked because you’re supposed to swap those out regularly I think. It made a vigorous cloud and a scary sound.

Dozens of variations you can take with the trails in my state park like different patterns of ribbon. The way the trails ribboned out it was all a mess. Ruminating as I go over the pattern-making with words and LLMs and how they’ve gotten so much better but still miss the human element. Then driving home the long arcs of water sprinklers swinging over the golf course. It’s an insanely rich-looking neighborhood but the pattern of landscaped shrubs and trees is too manicured and predictable. Nothing like nature, kind of like an LLM actually, mimicking.

Sad, reflective Radiohead songs were perfect end-of-summer anthems and that’s what we listened to driving Lily to the airport. But it was a quick goodbye and I got back in the car and focused on not dying getting out of SeaTac.

I saw an owl on the trail and wasn’t sure what kind of omen that was. But now it’s like some dark game in my head not running into a cougar. I came around a turn and sensed movement and leapt in terror at a squirrel (!). Their tails are shaped like question marks and remind me of the square on Monopoly called Chance. Could be good, could be bad. Flip the card.

I tracked Lily’s location and saw she was at the chateau already; the transport company did a good job of collecting the students in Frankfurt and conveying them to Strasbourg. They had a very controlled agenda for the days leading up to school starting and that would force her out of bed and into the new time zone.

Sometimes at the state park I could imagine I was deep on the PCT in some backwoods dreamscape by the quiet of it all and the lush patchwork of ferns. Soft murmurings in the leaves nearby, birds and bugs doing flybys. The best was coming to the park on a weekend when there were no thoughts of work and I could stand in the shadow of a large tree and write on my phone as the sun inched upwards. The colors and sounds, the whole vibe of it put my mind at ease, made me feel clean. Or connected to nature in a way that went beyond my sense of self. That peace I imagined of one day returning to the earth. It neglected all the other losses and attachments. But it was right.

The little spiders inching upwards too: it was the season of the webs now, that time of year they’re everywhere and look jeweled in the early morning light. There was something in that E.B. White story with the pig and spider I often thought about in September when we’d go to the state fair. That bridge between summer and fall, inching our way across it —hanging on to these little patterns we’ve made.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, prose, writing

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, pacific northwest