At the beginning of the summer, Suzanne had a dozen chickens in a coop next to the tiny house, with a second, smaller coop near the shed at the far end of the yard. The ground of the enclosures around the big coop was bare dirt, all traces of plant life gobbled down by the birds inside, but the area by the back coop was surrounded by brush and weeds with plenty of opportunities for thriving communities of bugs and spiders. You’d think this would be a no-brainer for the chickens, right? Smaller coop with prolific food and snack sources should always win out over bigger barren coop, right?

Not so much. Chickens do not like to be separated from the flock. The small coop — overflowing with snacks! — was the punishment zone, and the chickens hated being relegated to it. Suzanne, however, wanted them to clear out the weeds for her. Her solution was to add a few more chickens to the flock: young ones, who would start out in the small coop and stay there.

She bought four… teenage chickens. I’m sure there’s a name for that in the chicken world, but I’m equally sure that I’m not in the mood to start browsing the internet looking for it. Well, it’s not that I’m not in the mood, but if I fall into an internet rabbit hole today, I will probably not manage to pull myself out anytime soon. So whatever, four teenage chickens, mixed breeds of ameraucana and something else that Suzanne can’t remember.

Suzanne, having had many chickens over the years, doesn’t feel the need to name every chicken anymore. She calls the flock of them, “the ladies,” and pretty much leaves it at that, although a few of the older ones do have names. I’m not so nonchalant about cute teenage chickens, though, so within a few days, I’d decided that these birds should be named after the queens of England.

If you look closely at the above picture, you’ll see that the bird who’s looking out at the camera has some dark fluffy feathers around her beak. Another one has white feathers in the same spot. I named the one with white feathers Elizabeth, for her Elizabethan ruff, and the one with the dark feathers Victoria, for her expression of disapproval. The other two, somewhat interchangeable, were Mary and Anne.

Their royal majesties, however, did not grow up to be interchangeable. To begin with, three of the four of them were escape artists. The area around the small coop was enclosed with soft fencing, boards, and buildings (the shed and the coop), but Victoria, Elizabeth, and Mary treated that whole enclosure thing as more of a suggestion than a rule. I’d regularly go out into the garden and discover chickens wandering free. After all, given a choice between gobbling on thick weeds or tender basil plants and strawberries, who would choose the weeds? Anne, apparently, who never seemed to wander with the others.

Because Suzanne wasn’t inclined to let the chickens feast on the plants that she wanted in her garden, she decided their majesties needed to move into the main coop with the rest of the birds. I was worried about them — wouldn’t they get picked on? Were the older chickens going to share their food? I’m not going to say Suzanne laughed at me, but she definitely didn’t share my concern. And rightfully so.

Possibly I shouldn’t have named them after royalty, because the teenage hooligans took over the main coop within a few weeks. They stay up later than the others — everyone else has gone to bed and they’re still roaming, hunting for the last of the daily pellets of food — but despite their late bedtimes, they sleep on the top rung of the roost. They share it with a couple of the others, but all four of them wind up squished in on the highest row, which is the power position for chickens.

And Mary, formerly the Queen of Scots, now known as Mary-Mary-Quite-Contrary, has continued her escape artist proclivities. She’s still light enough to fly to the top of the fence on the big coop, then fly down on the other side and wander around the garden, selecting leaves of basil and flowers to snack on at her leisure.

Initially, getting her back into the coop was a challenge for me. But chickens are not nearly as stupid as I was always told they were. Now when Mary-Mary gets out, I grab a chicken snack — maybe some scraps of vegetables leftover from cooking, or a handful of berries, or maybe a little granola — and head to the door of the coop. Mary-Mary hurries back to get her share of the fresh loot before I can leave her out of it. She would probably say that human beings aren’t as stupid as she always thought they were.

Yesterday I spent $20 at the feed store to buy a big bag of chicken treats. Suzanne laughed and said the chickens would adore me. I, somewhat smugly, said that her chickens already adore me, and she promised that adoration would turn to worship. I am pretty sure that Mary-Mary is not the worshipping type, however. She thinks those treats are nothing more than her due.

I am ridiculously fond of her.

The cave photo from a few days ago, made just a little more fun. I didn’t actually do any of the complicated compositing things I’ve learned about — atmospheric perspective and balancing light and shadows and so on. I just gave it a magic bird and a path of clouds and a pretty sky and some sparkle. It was very satisfying. Sharing so Carol can see!

I didn’t check the temperature, but I’m pretty sure the night we spent in the Oregon desert was the coldest I’ve ever been in Serenity. That was mostly because we hadn’t been on the road for more than a meal or two before my propane died again, which meant I had no heater. Fortunately, I’ve been living in Arcata long enough to have stocked up on my warm layers: I wore a t-shirt, a sweater, a thermal layer, a fleece, my jacket, leggings, socks, and blue jeans, and huddled under a sleeping bag and three blankets and I was fine. Even Zelda got to wear a jacket.

Our spot in the desert was located outside Plush, Oregon, near the sunstone Public Collection area, at the Spectrum Mine. The people at the mine apparently also thought it was too cold. We got there after a day of driving at around 4:30. According to their sign, the office was open from 9 until 5, but no one was there. We wandered around for a bit, then found our way to their camping area (free for the night) and settled in.

The next morning, we waited some more. 9AM went by with no signs of life. 10AM also went by with no signs of life. Eventually — and I’m going to say it was probably within fifteen minutes of our deciding to give up entirely, despite having driven twenty miles down dirt roads to get to the mine — a guy showed up and said it was too cold to do the conveyor belt, but maybe we could do it in the afternoon, if it warmed up. Meanwhile, we could dig in the dirt if we wanted to. So we did. I wish I’d taken some pictures, but I was too busy digging. 🙂

We debated whether we wanted to stay or not, but it was a gorgeous day, (albeit chilly) and the conveyor belt mining experience felt like one of those things that you’re only ever going to do once. Once we left, we knew wouldn’t be making the drive back to give it a second chance. So we stuck around until 1 or so, when a woman came over and told us they’d start the belt running for us, and explained how it worked.

Basically, they take a big load of dirt and bulldozer it into a machine that breaks it into smaller pieces and then sprays water on it and dumps it onto a conveyor belt. You stand by the belt and take the sunstones as they appear. The belt goes pretty fast and you don’t get second chances — if you don’t grab the stone as it goes by, it falls off into the big pile of dirt and is gone forever. Within a couple minutes, Suzanne was making jokes about Lucy and Ethel and within ten minutes, I knew for sure I didn’t ever want to work in a factory. It was bizarrely stressful. But also really fun.

I have no idea what we’ll do with our piles of sunstones: it’s almost as bad as my Mason jar of Oregon beach rocks. Most of them are pebbles, really, so maybe we’ll sprinkle them around the rose bushes so they can sparkle in the sunshine in the garden. Or maybe I’ll put them into another Mason jar to sit on my windowsill. But it was fun collecting them — they’re not worth much, but it still feels like hunting for treasure to find the sparkles in the dirt.

After the conveyor belt finally stopped, however, we hurried on our way. I’d found a hotel in Lakeview, Oregon — Hunter’s Hot Springs Lodge — with a hot spring and dry camping in the parking lot and we wanted to get there before dark. Within three hours, we were immersed in the steaming hot pool, which was lovely.

That said, they charged $40 per night/per camping unit for dry camping in a parking lot which was way, way over-priced. Actually, let me add another “way.” Way, way, way over-priced. It was a parking lot. A noisy parking lot. And the hot springs didn’t have any of the basic amenities, ie a shower in the changing room — it was just a warm swimming pool. That said, it was a delightful warm swimming pool. But still, for $40, I would have liked to rinse off the minerals when I got out of the water. But when you’ve been freezing cold and then digging in the dirt all day, a hot spring is a sweet luxury. If I got to go back in time, I’d still spend the money, I think. Although probably I would have suggested paying a little more to get a room with an actual shower and less noise from cars coming and going at all hours. Live and learn.

The next morning, we headed back to California. We were about six or seven hours away from Arcata, so we could have made it all the way here if we’d wanted to, but we didn’t. We knew we were going to spend one more night camping on the way, we just weren’t sure where. Our final decision was influenced — strongly! — by the rising temperatures on our dashboards. When it passed 90 and kept climbing in Redding, I knew if we were actually going to spend another night camping, we needed water. Not drinking water, but atmosphere-cooling water. At some pause along the way, I suggested we take a look at the Douglas City Campground, a BLM campground with 23 sites. The selling point from the description in the Allstays app: “beach.”

I’m gonna say, “beach” would be… an exaggeration. River access might be more accurate. But I would happily stay at that campground again any time. Our campsite was set in trees, within easy walking distance of the river where Zelda and Riley were both happy to splash. It was a perfect place to spend a relaxing afternoon, even with temps in the 90s. It was one final burst of summer. The next morning, we had a nice walk through the trees along this fine trail, then headed home to Arcata.

Suzanne had camped at Indian Well, the campground at the Lava Beds National Monument, before, so she knew exactly which site she wanted: #18.

Or not.

The campground and much of the surrounding area had burned, recently enough that the damage was still obvious. Site 18 was black and charred, looking out onto a vista of ashes and soot. Fortunately, other parts of the campground had survived and we found two sites together without any difficulty.

And the fire didn’t damage the fun parts of Lava Beds, aka the caves. Suzanne was still under the weather, but not so under the weather that she didn’t want to go clambering around underground, so we spent our Tuesday wandering from cave to cave, managing to explore five of them — Golden Dome, Sunshine, Indian Well, and Upper and Lower Sentinel.

Was I efficient enough to tag my photos with actual names of the caves when I took them? No, of course not. Honestly, though, pictures of caves don’t strike me as all that interesting in retrospect — rocks, rocks, and more rocks, really, with not a lot of color — so it’s probably just as well.

My favorite cave, though, was definitely the one that most reminded me of every video game I ever played in my childhood. As we climbed down into it, I told Suzanne that I fully expected to be attacked by either orcs or goblins any second.

Lava Beds also had truly spectacular sunrises, sunsets, and night sky. Desolate scenery is always good for a good sky. So are wildfires, for that matter. (There were none burning anywhere near us, of course, or we wouldn’t have been there, but fire season isn’t over and I’m sure the amount of ash in the air had something to with the colorful skies.)

This final photo is only sort of a photo of the Lava Beds. Or rather it is, but it has been extremely thoroughly tweaked in my image-editing software. Those aren’t the real colors, that’s not the real sky. The weather, in fact, involved beautiful blue skies with spectacular clouds every day that we were on the road. But I was experimenting and I liked the way this one turned out. And it does capture the charred desolation well, even if it was a lot less apocalyptic in person.

Last week, Suzanne and I went camping. I brought my computer, but I barely used it — I didn’t even write morning words most days, which is something I’ve done every day for years now — and I never connected it to the internet. It was so relaxing. An escape from the news, even if only for a few days.

Our first campground, Junction City, is only a couple hours away from Arcata. Suzanne had caught my cold, so after a reasonably relaxed morning of loading up, we agreed to drive for a while, then stop for lunch and consider our options from there. She was sure she’d be fine to keep driving for a few more hours; I, having just spent several days with presumably the same germs, thought she probably ought to be resting instead. By the time we made it to Junction City, the germs were winning so we snagged two sites side-by-side and made it a stop for the night.

The campground has twenty-two spots, I think, and definitely the nicest ones – in terms of privacy & aesthetics — were the higher numbers, but those were also deeper in the trees and seriously buggy. The campground hosts (very friendly and helpful) warned us about the bugs before we picked our spots, so we walked the dogs around the campground before deciding and then chose two spots that were more exposed, but much less buggy. The highway – 299 – was within view from our spots and definitely within hearing, but apart from that, the spots were nice. Very spacious, great trees.

Zelda, as always, let me know at about 3AM that she was ready for a walk. Sigh. But the night sky was fantastic. Beautiful and clear, with no moon, the kind of night where so many stars are visible that it’s impossible not to feel like an infinitesimal speck in the immensity of the universe. Well worth getting up at 3AM.

The next day was mostly a driving day. We stopped at the Veterans Living Memorial Sculpture Garden outside of Weed for lunch and did not do nearly a good enough job of exploring. Zelda was doing the slow-mo, elderly dog walk and Suzanne should have been in bed with some chicken soup and bad television, so we saw the Memorial Wall, which is basically in the parking lot, and I managed to walk to the nearest sculpture, just to prove that there really were sculptures out there, but it was very low-key touristing.

After lunch, we kept driving. Our destination was Indian Well Campground at the Lava Beds National Monument. Spoiler: we made it there with no trouble. But for some reason this blog post has taken me forever to write, perhaps because I’ve spent so long playing with the images, so I think I’ll write about Lava Beds tomorrow. It was excellent, so there’s lots to say and many pictures to play with!

I’ve been sick for the past few days, which has seemed extremely unfair. Also, practically impossible! I’ve been such a good isolator. I stay at home, I go nowhere, I see no one except Suzanne… how could I have possibly caught anything? But there’s a ton of smoke in the air and I realized this morning that I might have a sinus infection, not a cold, which would explain how I could have gotten it without being exposed to someone else’s germs. Bacterial infections just need a good environment and all the smoke has left me permanently congested.

The good news, of course, is that sinus infections are mostly easily curable with antibiotics. Alas, the bad news is that I do everything in my power to avoid taking antibiotics, because my gut bacteria have the fragile, delicate sensibilities of Victorian women wearing ten pounds of corsets and laces. The slightest hint of aggression and down they go, turning my already limited diet into one that includes yogurt, yogurt, and more yogurt. And not much else. But I’m feeling better this morning than I have been, so maybe I’ll continue with the zinc and elderberry syrup regime prescribed by Suzanne and hope for the best, at least for another day or two.

My entertainment during my sick days has been watching youtube videos about my graphics software, Affinity Photo, and then playing with the software. Ostensibly I’m still learning how to design my own covers, but I have no idea what story this picture would be a cover for. Maybe I’ll write one someday. I really like it, though, mostly because that path is actually the path running alongside my dad’s house. If you look closely you can see the chainlink fence. And I love the thought that such a familiar path might actually be leading to a castle.

I actually have a vast collection of photos of paths. I’ve been taking them for years, all sorts of paths. Some roads, too. Most of them have been backed up on different USB drives, but I might spend a few days organizing photos and looking for them, because playing with this software might not count as “productive” but it definitely counts as “creatively satisfying.”

In other news… nope, I got nothing. Life goes on, one day at a time. Suzanne and I are planning another small camping trip next week, so hopefully the weather and the fires will cooperate. I’m trying not to worry about my failure to write words — well, actually, I’m trying not to worry about anything. It’s not an easy task these days! But I remind myself of all the things that I’m grateful for — hot running water, a happy dog, music playing, a comfortable bed, good friends, toast… so many things. Including the opportunity to learn more about my graphics software, which I am now going to get back to. Take care of yourselves and if you can, vote early!

Meals cooked this week:

Friday (not shown): Rice bowls with eye of round, sautéed greens & peppers, tomatoes & avocado, plus chili garlic sauce.

This is more in nature of a reminder to myself than anything else. It’s almost noon and I haven’t walked the dogs or made the bed or exercised or written good words or learned anything… I haven’t even taken a shower. It’s not a good sign when I’m trying to give myself Shine for putting on pants. Go, me, I’m wearing clothing…

But, in fact, even if I’m an abysmal marketer who doesn’t know how to sell books, and even if I’m a lousy writer all out of ideas, and even if I’m a bad mom whose son doesn’t care about her, much less love her, I’m still doing a damn good job of feeding an essential worker. Go, me.

Sometimes we have to take our Shine where we can get it.

I started to transcribe this conversation and then thought I was unfairly misrepresenting myself, because I was automatically correcting my punctuation and capitalization, and of course I don’t properly punctuate texts. Does anyone? But the misplaced apostrophe in her name does pain me. It’s Martha Wells, not Martha Well.

Anyway, I’ve decided I like reviews by text: succinct, to the point, not very organized, but covering the most relevant details. Which, in the case of Murderbot, includes the fact that I would rather be rereading them than doing much of anything else, so I think I’ll go do that. 🙂

On Saturday, I went to the farmer’s market for the first time in months. I’ve been avoiding it because of the pandemic, but the organizers have really mastered the socially-distanced market: the booths are outside the sidewalk, and on the other side, lines extend into the square with spaces marked on the grass with tape. One person at a time is allowed to approach a booth, while foot traffic flows one way around the square, masks required.

There were still crowds of people, which I found… stressful. Eons ago, I was reading the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, as one does, (at least when one is in graduate school for mental health counseling), and was surprised to discover that I met the clinical criteria for agoraphobia. Anyone who’s only been reading my blog since I’ve been traveling is probably equally surprised, but not all agoraphobes are trapped in their houses.

And a pandemic is either agoraphobe heaven or hell, depending on how you look at it. My complete dislike of crowds is now totally justified. Instead of unreasonable anxiety limiting my life choices, it’s a reasonable response to a threatening world! It’s still uncomfortable, however, and I was really unhappy to be around so many people.

Fortunately, right around the time when I was thinking, “I can’t do this,” I walked past a booth that had two magical attributes: no line, and a sign reading, “Harvest Box, $20.” I immediately purchased my harvest box of greens, cabbage, sugar snap peas, green onions, leeks, five kinds of peppers, and a squash, then stopped at the next booth over, added some tomatoes, and headed home. Success!

I didn’t stay home for long, though. About an hour later, I hopped in Suzanne’s car and headed to the docks, where I bought 3lbs of black cod, straight from the boat.

That afternoon, I made Brazilian seafood stew. I’d link to a recipe, but I actually didn’t follow any of the recipes I found, and I didn’t write down my own. But basically, sauté a ton of vegetables including some spicy peppers, a little salt, a little pepper, and as much hot or smoky paprika as feels delicious (a couple teaspoons for me), add coconut milk, simmer, add chunks of white fish, simmer some more. When the fish is cooked, serve over rice.

We ate our stew on the porch and afterward, when we were cleaning up the kitchen, Suzanne asked if I wanted to walk the dogs. Z’s energy level was good and it was a gorgeous day, so I suggested we take them to the beach. We went to Moonstone Beach, where the tide was as low as I’d ever seen it, which meant we got to visit the tide pools and admire the anemones and starfish.

That night, I decided to do a selection exercise in Affinity Photo. I found a stock photo with a complicated background, and did my best to cleanly select an element from it. Once I’d made my selection, I copied it a few times, then started playing with it. I used layer blend modes, the transform tools, masking, the liquify persona, a clipping layer, the mesh warp tool, a paint brush with low opacity, flow, and hardness settings… I’m looking at the image now and thinking I need to fix a shadow and a highlight, but I’m not going to, because the point isn’t to create perfect images, it’s to learn.

It was really just an ordinary Saturday, nothing special about it. It was also, simultaneously, an amazing day, one I’m grateful to have had.

It was about a four hour drive up 101 to our next campground, Beverly Beach State Park, so we took a break at the midpoint, Clausen Oysters. We were in separate vehicles, of course — me driving Serenity, Suzanne with her car and trailer — which makes for a much less fun road trip. It was probably my least favorite day of the trip, too, because while driving alone I thought far too much about He Who Shall Not Be Thought About, and it made me so sad. On our trip to Key West a few years back, oysters were his pick for a treat and… yeah. I think I might be off oysters for a while.

But not because the oysters at Clausen weren’t great — they were. Suzanne also got the oyster tacos and an oyster po’boy, which she assures me were terrible. (That’s what you say to your gluten-intolerant friend when you’re closing your eyes in ecstasy over the deliciousness of your non-gluten free meal.)

Our campsite at Beverly was also fantastic. We had spot G-24 and yes, I’m actually noting a campsite for future reference because it was such a great spot. Tucked away, a nice size, and with a dirt path at the back that led onto the nature trail and a creek. So pretty! I have so many photos from this campsite — of light falling through the pines, of the dogs being cozy, of the path and the creek…

We even built a campfire that night and I toasted a ton of marshmallows.

The next day, we were moving to a new campsite within the same campground, so we packed up in the morning, parked Serenity and Huggie (Suzanne’s trailer) in the parking lot, and then went off adventuring. Beaches, beaches, and more beaches. But we also picked up take-out lunch at the Nye Beach Cafe, including gluten-free clam chowder — so exciting! The first time I’ve had clam chowder in many years and it was always one of my favorites. And it was delicious! Their website also promised the best gluten-free bread I’ve ever tasted, which was almost true. It wasn’t better than the gluten-free bread from Arise Bakery in Arcata, but it was definitely the best GF bread I’d ever had in Oregon.

Our spot that night was not nearly as nice as our first spot had been. Partly that was because it was Thursday, essentially the beginning of the holiday weekend, and the crowds were picking up. Lots of inadvertent eavesdropping on groups of people all around us, which is not my favorite kind of camping even pre-pandemic, but it felt particularly weird knowing the pandemic is still raging.

On Friday, we headed south. We stopped at Clausen again so Suzanne could repeat her oyster tacos, but I didn’t want more oysters. Instead, I found a place in Banton, Tony’s Crab Shack, with gluten-free fish tacos on their menu. No guessing, the menu item literally says “Fresh Fish Tacos (Gluten-Free)”! We took the dogs there, got take-out, and had a nice waterfront walk. Suzanne visited the small farmer’s market and got some carrot cake for dessert, and then we stopped at a kitchen store that had a Going Out of Business sign. Unfortunately, it was essentially already gone. But they had a table of last minute giveaways and we each took a dishtowel, which we’d both needed earlier in the week. It felt serenditpitous.

Our reservation that night was for the only campsite they’d had left at Bullard’s Beach State Park. I am not going to offer any judgements of the campground, because a) we’d gotten the last spot available and b) it was a holiday weekend and c) all the amenities, ie showers, etc, were closed because of the pandemic. Our site wasn’t terrible and I’d stay there again, but otherwise the campground was just over-crowded and unmemorable.

The beach, though, was delightful. I don’t know where all the campers were — maybe still racing their bicycles in loops around the campground? — but the beach was huge with lots of interesting rocks. We had a fun wander there in the afternoon and then another fun wander there the next morning.

On Saturday morning, we faced a decision point. Our original plan — the mountains — was not on. The weather was too hot & too dry. Our second plan, developed earlier in the week, was to drive east along the Rogue River near Gold Beach where there are some campgrounds that don’t take reservations. We might have found a nice place to stay for a few nights. But Suzanne was nervous, not about the chances of finding a campsite, but about potential fires shutting down the roads home. So instead we drove back to Arcata. We took our time, stopping at Fred Meyer in Brookings and picking up take-out sushi for a picnic in a park overlooking the water, but by dinner we were home.

In plenty of time for this scene on Wednesday morning:

We aren’t in danger here. Disasters can happen anywhere, of course, but in this exact spot, the disaster is much more likely to be an earthquake or the tsunami from an earthquake than a wildfire. (If there’s an earthquake, my job is to grab the dogs and the one cat who I might be able to carry and get to higher ground immediately.) But there is a fire in Humboldt County and as of Thursday, most of the roads in and out of the area were closed due to fires and evacuations. On the bright side, I’m so glad we had our vacation a week earlier. If it had been this past week, we’d have had to cancel. Still, that week of peaceful pleasant beach time and nature already feels so far away and so long ago. It was lovely while it lasted, though.