This tree glowered under a lively sky.
I had a day of bureaucracy and bureaucracy-adjacent events. I had a doctor’s appointment in the morning (post-cancer annual wellness check-up – 10 years!). I am dealing with a lot of stuff for the gift store (more on that later). I had to renew my driver’s license at the bustling Craig DMV (I wasn’t LATE – I had until midnight, today, the woman said). Et cetera.
[daily log: walking, 4km;]
This tree was next to where an eagle lurked on the pier railing.
[daily log: walking, 5km; dogwalking, 3km;]
This tree was hanging out along the road to town this morning.
[daily log: walking, 5km; retailing, 8hr]
This tree is a guest tree from my past. I took this picture in October, 2011, while walking around the neighborhood where my work was in Goyang City, South Korea (경기도 고양시 일산서구). It is a metasequoia (Chinese dawn redwood), which abounded as planted ornamentals in my area in Korea.
[daily log: walking, 5km; retailing, 8hr]
This tree was up before dawn yesterday.
I took my dad and aunt Janet to the airport this morning. I helped a coworker by driving him across the island in the middle of the day. And I went back to the airport to collect my uncle Alan. Lots of driving. Somewhat tiring.
[daily log: walking, 2km; driving, 5hr]
This tree was neutral while my dad and his sister took a walk down the road.
[daily log: walking, 7km;]
This tree beheld a painterly sky.
My aunt Janet and I took the neighbors’ dog on a long walk to the end of the road, about 3 miles each way. It did not rain, despite the forecast. We even saw 2 (two) rays of sunshine.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 8km]
This tree was near a (carved) bear on top of a totem pole at Kasaan Village.
As tourists, today my dad and my aunt Janet and I drove over to Kasaan Village (on the east side of the island, about 2 1/2 hours each way). We saw totem poles, a longhouse, a windy rocky beach, had some lunch, and did a driving tour of some other areas on the way back…
[daily log: walking, 4km; touristic driving, 6hr]
This tree was off in the far distance among others of its kind.
[daily log: walking, 6km;]
This tree was letting some seemingly premature yellow leaves loose on a gust of wind.
I got my dad and his sister, my aunt Janet, at the airport directly after work this evening. So they are visiting for the next several days.
[daily log: walking, 5km; retailing, 8hr]
This tree stayed above the fray.
[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 8hr]
This tree is is a guest tree from my past. It was in front of a small Buddhist hermitage I ran across on a hike in rural Jeollanam Province, South Korea, in October, 2010.
[daily log: walking, 1.5km;]
This tree was behind a purple-leaved blueberry bush.
Because of his memory issues, sometimes I’ll end up having to have the same exact conversation with Arthur 3 or 4 times in a day. And he gets offended if I point out that it isn’t the first time we’ve had a given conversation – but somehow I can’t resist pointing it out, as it gets emotionally exhausting reviewing where the spare chargers for his ipods are for the 4th time, while he seems anxiously puzzled that he didn’t know where they were (or that he has them at all), though he’d placed them there himself.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 3km]
This tree was a white-barked alder among many other alders in a slightly dim forest.
[daily log: walking, 5km; dogwalking, 3km]
This tree saw the sky turn pinkish as the sun set.
[daily log: walking, 1.5km;]
This tree was on a hillside above some newly exposed dirt and gravel.
[daily log: walking, 2km;]
This tree was next to the newly built foundation for the utility shed (“cabin”?) on lot 73.
[daily log: walking, 4km; retailing, 8hr]
This tree was behind a newly-built rock retaining wall.
[daily log: walking, 5km; retailing, 8hr]
This tree was across the inlet from a herd of cormorants on neighbor Brant’s boat. Note also the young eagle on the dock ramp railing.
[daily log: walking, 5km; laboring, 6hr]
This tree is a guest tree from my past. I took this picture of a tree-trunk and adjacent magpie while walking to or from work one day in June, 2011, in Goyang, Gyeonggi, South Korea (경기도 고양시 일산서구).
[daily log: walking, 5km; laboring, 6hr]
This tree oversaw the proliferation of plumbing.
[daily log: walking, 4km; laboring, 5hr]
This tree was there as we labored to start placing the piers that will support the new utility shed on lot 73.
[daily log: walking, 5km; laboring 8hr;]
This tree was beside the new trench where up the hill service pipes go: water, future propane, electricity.
[daily log: walking, 5km; compacting gravel, 1hr;]
This tree caught some morning sunlight stained yellow by smoke from Canadian wildfires.
These days I am quite exhausted at the end of the day. Too much going on, too much emotional energy getting used up. I’ve been in burnout mode.
[daily log: walking, 5.5km; retailing, 8hr;]
This tree was alarmed by an interloping excavator.
Richard, the excavatorer, seemed a bit on edge yesterday.
Richard does excellent work and is highly competent – he knows the “right way” to do things and works efficiently – but he is difficult to communicate with, because he has very strong opinions which he believes to be facts. Sometimes you just have to let him do it “his way” and adapt to what he’s done afterward, similar to dealing with natural disasters.
[daily log: walking, 5.5km; retailing, 8hr;]
This tree thought there might be a shift in the weather. The last few days the nights have been slightly cooler, and I noticed today that the fireweed was changing color.
[daily log: walking, 6km;]
This tree was unaware of the fish in the nearby sea.
[daily log: walking, 5km;]
This tree is a guest tree from my past. Farther in my past than other guest trees, this photo was taken, probably by my mother or father, in front of the house they bought in far northern California in the year I was born. That’s my dad’s Model A Ford parked in front, and the trailer it had towed out from Kentucky a few years before. He still has both the car (which still runs, sporadically) and the trailer. The cherry tree in the photo, in the house’s front yard, is long gone, replaced by quite different trees.
[daily log: walking, 3km;]
This tree was on the shore while Arthur and Wayne went out in the boat to try to catch fish.
It was nice to have a break. As I’ve mentioned before, fishing with Arthur, for me, is not actually fun at all. Arthur has strong feelings about how fishing should happen, and he doesn’t have any confidence in my ability to navigate or assist. I’m still a 12-year-old kid in his eyes, often times. But with his cognitive and physical challenges, these days, he isn’t really equipped to actually be the captain of the boat. So going out in the boat with him is a huge emotional challenge. He gets mad and has tantrums, or he just gives up and sulks. Or he gets obsessed about one issue or another, like the time we spent 40 minutes circling a spot in the water because we’d dropped a bucket in the water and he insisted we try to get it back.
Anyway, I expect the dynamic with him in the boat with Wayne would go differently. Art and Wayne are peers, firstly, and secondly, Wayne is the person who actually taught Arthur much of his fishing skills and boat-craft, many years ago. So Arthur will not distrust Wayne’s suggestions or skills.
Regardless, I could tell Wayne was tired from their half day out on the water together. Simply communicating with Arthur is exhausting – the combination of incipient deafness and difficulty with language processing combine to make it a slog to interact with him.
I haven’t been avoiding going out in the boat with Arthur – if anything, he’s been avoiding going out in the boat at all. He seems vaguely aware of his issues and limitations, at some level, and so he spends a lot of time making up excuses for why we don’t need to go out fishing. And I’ve been happy to enable him. And I was happy, today, to let Wayne take it on. I feel guilty that I was happy about that. Living up here, it’s very hard to explain to the people around me that I have come to actually rather strongly dislike fishing. But that’s what’s happened. I’m sorry.
They caught a few salmon, and a ling-cod.
[daily log: walking, 4.5km;]
This tree is a guest tree from my past. I took this picture while walking to work in Goyang City, South Korea, in November, 2015. The route was frequent enough that I know exactly where this tree is, even 8 years later.
[daily log: walking, 3km;]
This tree met a bear on the road.
[daily log: walking, 4.5km;]
This tree was beside a runway at an airport where a friend coming to visit landed earlier today. The plane that Wayne was in is the one on the far left of the photo – it had just touched down. It was raining. It’s been raining a lot. You can click the pic to see it bigger.
[daily log: walking, 3km;]
This tree is about one inch tall. I think I germinated a cypress tree seed in my greenhouse. I’m not completely sure on the identity, but it’s the only thing I planted in that bucket. I will try to grow a cypress tree.
[daily log: walking, 2.5km;]
