Disclaimer: I met Mark Zoller at the Seattle Travel Show. When I told him I write for Snowshoe Magazine, he invited me up to spend some time in the area, to go rafting, snowshoeing with a local guide, and to stay at a regional B&B. I’ll have a story going out in the next issue of Snowshoe Magazine – here are a few things that won’t make the cut.
Chatting with the guides at Zoller’s
Zoller’s runs rafting trips year round. There’s a steep catwalk from the parking lot that goes right down to the river. Mark Zoller or one of his experienced and trustworthy guides will suit you up, give you a short orientation, and take you for the ride of your life on the river. It takes as long as it takes, depending on what the water is doing on the day you’re on it. Families with small children are welcome, as are boats full of “the ladies.”
Joetta, one of Zoller’s guides, is telling me about the river. There are a bunch of numbers – cubic feet per something or other, some one through five rating, the number of people in the boat, the number of people per year, the number of years their oldest customer had (90?)…
When you’re looking for a river guide, you want experience of course, first and foremost. After that, things get fuzzier. Do they have changing rooms or are you going to peel down in the parking lot? How new is the gear and how often does it get updated? What’s the transportation like? How long have they been in business and how long have they had their guides?
There are three guides unloading from the trip of the day. They’re red cheeked and excited, hopped up on a swell ride. The guests are shivering in their rented gear but they look excited too and smile big when I ask them if they had a good time. There’s a cute couple from Seattle (maybe a guy taking his girl for an adventure) and a local woman. They’re all a little damp around the edges but they look exhilarated, if a little tired.
Joetta tells me a story of a crying guest. It’s orientation, when Zoller’s tells the guests what to expect and there’s a woman at the back, not quite hysterical but certainly weepy. She thinks she can’t do it. She’s afraid. She doesn’t know how to paddle, doesn’t think she can handle it. Her husband isn’t exactly encouraging her. Joetta steps in. “Don’t worry,” she tells the overwrought guest. “Can you work a camera? You’ll sit at the back with me and take the pictures. It’s important work and someone has to do it.”
You can guess how this story ends, right? Though you may not take it quite this far. The guest was transformed. She loved the river, she participated, she paddled and cheered and had a fantastic time and got out of the water cheering “Again! Again!” And her fearfulness? Gone. Apparently next up for this guest? Skydiving.
Husum Highlands Morning
The early morning sky is blowing east and every now and then a piece of it gets stuck on Mount Hood, making it disappear for a while. The clouds are pink and yellow and purple, a cartoon dinosaur migration toward the sunrise. A bird that sounds like a squeaky gate hinge breaks the silence. Two horses, one red rust, the other the color of a slice of toast just burning around the edges, graze in the meadow.
Yesterday evening the toast colored one ran all the way across the field, moving fast and making me realize I’ve never seen an unsaddled horse run before save for in the movies. I was disappointed when she didn’t circle back but maybe she was too when she came up against the electric wire that marked her boundary. This morning, the horses move slowly, taking steps towards each other from opposite sides of the paddock.
The sky lifts, the horizon turning pale yellow and fading into the blue of a palace ceiling. Downstairs, I can hear the coffee grinder and then, oddly, opera. It sounds like morning. The sun breaks over the mountains and everything is lit with long golden light.
Crossroads
I’m at a junction called BZ Corner on the state highway. There’s a battered diner sign – it must have been an “EAT” once – on a tall post as though you could miss it. There’s a mercantile/mini mart across the street. Two big dogs sprawl in the gravelly parking lot. On the opposite corner there’s a log building with a chainsaw carved bear standing guard on the porch. A couple of Harleys are parked out front, and two big pick up trucks. I’m scribbling a note on a bit of scrap paper and the big black dog wanders across the street to put her head in my lap. This interferes with my note writing so I stand up and lean against the side of the car, using my road atlas for backing. A beat up van rolls in the lot where I’m parked. It’s one of those eight seater Dodges with the blue paneling on the side. The driver leans across to the passenger window and shouts to me, “Hey, do you want to sell your car?” I look behind me at the Tercel and start laughing. “I’ve been looking for one of those cars,” he says. “How much do you want for it?”
The Dodge smells of gasoline and the captain’s chair driver’s seat is shredded on one side. The guy behind the wheel has the same blue and battered attire as his transportation, but he looks friendly enough. We talk Tercel for a little bit. I toy with the idea of asking for 1000 cash, taking the Grayhound to Portland, and then, jumping on the train back to Seattle. My imagination does not get the better of me. Another guy wanders up to the van. “Hey,” he says to the driver, “I’m about to pay to get rid of some Dodge seats. Do you want first crack at them?”
Rainbow
When the first thing you see in the morning is a rainbow, it is hard not to expect a perfect day. The amazing thing is that I was not disappointed. The fact that I took the wrong road down, got stuck in a hole, and left the lights on so I could not start my car did not detract in any way.
About halfway in to our day, my host put his hand on my head. “Listen,” he said, “it would be a shame to deprive the future of all THIS.” He tucked a cedar cone in to the pocket of my jacket. “I’m planting a seed. You give that to your husband. You know, you can adopt. Have you considered adopting?” Typically, I’m cranky with people who get at me about not having kids. But in this case, I was genuinely touched. Bill had already declared me family and now he’d decided that the planet needed more me. “All this wonderful stuff!” he said. “There should be more of that in the world!”
Later, we’re done snowshoeing and we’re on the way back to the car. Bill has opened up the throttle on the snowmobile and we are flying. He shouts to me – “Fast enough for ya?! Yee haw!” I’m laughing out loud. I close my eyes to the wind and I am filled with the smell of snow.
Now
It’s been a few days since I’ve had a really good cup of coffee. I’m in Ground in the center of Hood River. They have free wifi and Ray Charles.
I almost got teary about the kid thing. Seriously. I should have spent more time in Hood River…now I just think of it as that cool place we’d pass on the way to the Gorge…and where my pal used to love to go windsurfing…