Meanwhile Back At the Ranch

2012-01-27T21:01:00.000-08:00

2012-01-26T08:52:00.001-08:00

2012-01-26T08:47:00.001-08:00

2012-01-26T08:46:00.000-08:00

Derek got a new ride. His folks replaced the crib in his...uh, "crib" with this set of way hot wheels. Uncle Tim completely approves.

Rainbow. Connection.

2012-01-23T08:10:00.000-08:00

This image came my way via the Facebook. I love it. I can imagine that this sorting took a great deal of imagination and would compliment what Derek created the other day when he was over for a visit, although his view is far more abstract. Something about bones.

Ten years of joy, talent, and brilliance. Gone.

2012-01-14T12:51:00.000-08:00

All across the NW we are so saddened by this loss.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017225121_circusboy13.html

Yaak River, Montana

2012-01-14T11:15:00.000-08:00

2012-01-14T11:02:00.000-08:00

New Years from Montana's Cabinent Range

2012-01-14T10:59:00.000-08:00

My new fav wineglass. A Christmas gift from my sis.

2012-01-14T10:57:00.000-08:00

Derek does the boneyard

2012-01-14T10:55:00.000-08:00

Face. Lift.

2012-01-14T10:53:00.000-08:00

Brokeback Bed

2012-01-14T10:47:00.000-08:00

I've slept in this bed for over two decades.

On New Year's Eve the handcrafted logs finally became old wood, spilt, and the cross beams warped and now twisting could not get a grip amongst the gaping holes.

I'm thinking lawn art.

Until then, this is a current view of my crib.

And how ghetto is that?

Crtical thinking

2012-01-14T10:35:00.000-08:00

I stumbled into a heated debate last month with an Ivy League dude about the value of Annie Proulx' short story, and later published stand-alone book, Brokeback Mountain.

You know the work that later became a movie. But Brokeback is our bible don't ya know? How dare anyone step up to ride the dust devil mess of bad buckled assumptions, bratty Oscar victim hood and wide angled indulgences.

Remember all the Proulx worship? That her work was brave, ground breaking, and representative of western realities? In rushing to embrace all this authenticity the cultural phenomenon of Brokeback eclipsed the literary value of Brokeback.

I appreciate Proulx great writing in technique but yawned, yes yawned, through the great lengths of New Yorker destined lap dancing she engaged in even as critics fell in line to worship, almost stalker like, at the foothills of this tall tale. So invested in this perspective is the L L Bean set that some of them even went so far, as they tried to extend themselves into peer reviewed idiocy, linking the value of her writing to all this death of American Exceptionalism crap or that somehow, her penning of a really predictable story could represent the last "best-place, final stand" of the American dream. They claimed that Brokeback is really a collective mourning for the fatal wounding of our American addiction to manifest destiny.

Yes, that's right, Brokeback Mountain represented (in their minds) ALL THAT!

But really, she's not that good. This is nothing more than a story written about sheep herder cruising--one that somehow became a symbol hijacked by those who've never done more than fly over Wyoming and it became in their minds a tale representing the dead end cul-de-sacing of our addiction to the real value found in a western glance.

Yes westerners flocked to see the flick. They bought it on DVD at Walmart. But really, we wanted to see how much Alberta could pass for Wyoming.

Last month I endured this debate and now I stand corrected.

Let me step back and reevaluate Proulx. I must have missed something. And now I'd offer that this is so not great writing, its actually pathetic.

Proulx blows.

Yep, I didn't way back then and I still don't appreciate the predictability of Proulx, she with her blood succulent feedings in bar brawls and violent implied gay-bashed endings, her addiction to down low cowboy gore, and the narrow minded eastern sensibilities infecting nearly every character she portrays in this and her other stories. Her stereotypical characterizations of western homophobia, and the reality that much of the story is a direct rip off of Patricia Warren Nell's better told and far more ground breaking fiction "The Fancy Dancer", which by the way was published decades before Proulx attempt, never seems to penetrate the Brokeback debate and did not get much attention or traction from the typical critic back then when Brokeback was first published, when it landed on the Oscar nominations or even now.

The Ivy League Dude had never heard of the acclaimed writing of Nell.

The writing in Brokeback--yes it is evocative and full of memorable imagery and the tear jerker of two shirts dirty dancing in the closet and the dry cleaning send off at the end, yes, I admit it's great manipulation.

But really where is the literary rigor in that?

Is love not always a battlefield, and what of this constant craving of Proulx to reinforce a reliance on tragedy as a literary device, and her use of a distant and scary, if not hauntingly beautiful landscape as the back drop for most of her word processed bloodletting?

I still reject this sage inspired, soap-operaesque pissing and moaning, utilized by the author to reinforce a putrid prejudice of what westerners must think like. A view penned from the rancid perspective of a permanent outsider and Proulx seems incapable of turning that beauty that she acknowledges into anything other than a deceptive recipe for an unhappy ending.

Oh I know that in recent years the Proulx family bought a Wyoming ranch. These days they are all about conservation. Preserving the landscape. And yet in institutionalizing the homophobia of wide open spaces, I'd argue that her portrayal is the exception to the typical experience of what constitutes western identity. Instead I argue that Proulx writing is little more than ridiculous venting of recirculated hot air, circa the old faithful rigid expectations of the New Yorker readership, rather than any reliable accurate portrayal of western attitudes.

This New Year....

2012-01-14T08:54:00.000-08:00

I finished out the new year with a bang.

I nearly bounced a check. I broke my bed. And I thought this too shall pass. And it did.

I felt like my best defense toward ringing in 2012 was a good offense. I went to bed at 9 pm. I never heard all the fireworks let loose on the river. I never heard the horns honking, the shouts, and the coyotes and wolves howling in response. I never heard ten thousand dogs barking to protest the interruption of all that silence.

So yep it's now 2012.

It doth feel a bit different even if it feels the same.

I've already spent the new year with porn stars and escorts, preachers and artists, cowboys and Indians. I've prayed with a decedent of Hawaiian Royalty and I've prayed for a friend who is hiking 2600 miles in 26 wedding gowns over 26 weeks (http://www.hiking26.com/ ). I'm winning some. Losing some. I'm good with all that--as long as I continue to know that this view remains.

I wish everyone a belated Happy New Year!

I hope yours is a beautiful, brakeless, nearly careening-out-of-control, hot mess of a new year. Because those years tend to produce the best stories. Because there is beauty, stunning, breathtaking beauty, found on the last eve of the year,in being able to go to bed and feel crisp, welcoming sheets, and a fluffed pillow, and hopefully laying down on a bed frame that isn't about to crash to the floor--and yet knowing, even despite all that comfort--that on December 31, 2012 as you drift to sleep at 9 pm, you're thinking to yourself, as you close your eyes, my God! What a ride!

That 2012 so was--thee ride. Of a lifetime.

That's what I'm wishing. Your way.

2011-12-25T10:16:00.000-08:00

This Night Shall Stand...

2011-12-25T09:52:00.000-08:00

It has been a different sort of Christmas.

I've gazed into a window of despair as I've spent time at the syringe exchange. I've witnessed illumination as I hung out with amazing people there who keep on keeping on, regardless of budgets and shortages, and not a lot of good news on any front. I've taken in best practises and learned about precautions, even as precautions are often far from fail proof. Several friends of mine report that their HIV Meds are no longer working. Still others are experiencing their first Christmas under the burden of a new diagnosis of cancer, or HIV/AIDS or leukemia.

Some of my friends are in love. Others find themselves alone and in that, they stand huddled looking out in fear that this status might be permanent.

I've felt the chill of three straight weeks of ice fog and the heat of so much love coming my way, that I felt as if the sun had burned a hole in all that mist. It is a season of ice fog and it is also a season of clarity.

This year I did not get any Christmas lights up. I did not send Christmas Cards. I did not put up "the real man's" Christmas village, nor a Christmas tree, nor did I break out that familiar collection of Christmas discs. Instead I felt it important to sit still and listen to the silence.

I have made peace with uncertainty. I have felt this tinge of release and then serenity. I have felt nothing but-- the here and now while feeling everything that could be-- but not investing in any of it.

And in that, there is joy. It is abundant. It is sustainable. Joy is not covered in advertisements for Black Fridays or Super Saturdays or the next best thing to be forgotten the day after. It is intangible even in hopelessness and isolation, it is the most affirming thing I have ever known--that regardless of what happens, that I still know that this night will stand, and that however it stands, it is just as it was meant to be.

I've tried to make this a season of people rather than stuff. I've had coffee with friends. Laughed so hard on speaker phone I was crying. I've seen snow and frost, snow angels and snow devils, and I've seen dawn and sunset framed on the most magical hint of future skies.
I've taken pics of these things and transmitted them around the globe. I've had pictures come back to me with tons of images of places that signify that, yes, someday I'd still like to see that.

I write all this to point back to the beautiful mystery of belief. I am a man who regardless of sexual orientation, failings, and missing the mark, finds great illumination in a story that is datelined out of Bethlehem. This town that in Hebrew means a place of bread or a place of provision.

It is a place, lit in wonder, where this night shall stand. It is a place where despite all the check marks against me, I see hope and redemption and serenity. It is both physical and symbolic. A place like no other. In all that it represents, rules get broken and mended. Yet that representation is also not tied to anything tangible other than--it is and will always represent a place of provision. Where we all get what we need, even if its not what we were first looking for.

I know that on the list of people most likely thought heaven bound, I am not on the short list. I am estranged from the church, and estranged from many aspects of communities that most would assume I gravitate towards.

My friends are also estranged. Among them are whores. Meth Dealers. Men who hang out in bath houses. Ranchers, truckers and farmers whose colorful language salts the earth, whose thirst is quenched in taverns rather than at a communion rail. None of us are represented among the family values crowd. We are not represented at Christmas Eve Services. But we are, humbly represented, with track marks in our arms, condoms in our wallets, and redemption on our horizon, gathered around a symbolic manger.

Knowing that no matter what befalls us, this night shall always stand for us, as the last best place.

Of provision.

All you've ever wanted to know about this guy...published by my friend...Graham...

2011-12-22T10:48:00.000-08:00

http://www.metafilter.com/110724/Rock-Me-Falco

We Here Now...

2011-12-22T10:29:00.000-08:00

This was breathtakingly meaningful to me. I wish I knew why.

2011-12-22T10:08:00.000-08:00

White. Christmas.

2011-12-22T09:34:00.000-08:00

2011-12-22T09:33:00.000-08:00

2011-12-22T09:31:00.000-08:00

2011-12-22T09:30:00.000-08:00

2011-12-22T09:29:00.000-08:00

2011-12-22T09:28:00.000-08:00

2011-12-22T09:27:00.000-08:00

2011-12-22T07:43:00.000-08:00

2011-12-21T23:10:00.000-08:00

In case you are a bit over Bing Crosby and White Christmas....

2011-12-21T20:03:00.000-08:00

Who knew...Flashdance This.

2011-12-21T19:27:00.001-08:00

Hat tip Graham.

2011-12-21T12:07:00.003-08:00

Best Ad of 2010

2011-12-21T12:07:00.001-08:00

2011-12-21T12:06:00.001-08:00

2011-12-21T12:05:00.001-08:00

Lights along I-90 put up by farmers....to keep kids from going nuts on their way to grandma's for Christmas...

2011-12-21T12:04:00.001-08:00

Have Lens. Will Travel. The work of Kelly Doering and Stick People Productions.

2011-12-20T09:05:00.000-08:00

Kelly Doering of Stick People Productions, link below, has been documenting the lives of truckers. I found his work both fully human but also quite beautiful. This is an unabashed look at the sometimes lonely lives of those who are nomadic, live on the road and already this work is capturing change as it impacts the industry. For instance many truckstops no longer have sit down restaurants but only a selection of fast food offerings, eliminating the one element of human contact available to drivers--the waitress who calls ya hon, suga' and darling. How I loved them gals.

The two of us hope to collaborate on a documentary project later this year involving poetry, language, and yes....Truckers! Stay tuned.

Kelly is available to wok on a wide range of projects and almost all of his work is available for purchase.

You can contact him below.

All images are copyrighted by Kelly Doering and are used with permission.

http://www.stickpeopleproductions.com/

Almost the shortest day of the year.

2011-12-20T08:45:00.000-08:00

Right now the sun is setting almost directly to the south. In six months it will set almost directly to the north. We only have about 6.5 hours of daylight now, with things starting to get dark by three and not light until after eight am. It is a long winter this far north. But when the sun comes out, it is glorious.

2011-12-19T17:48:00.001-08:00

2011-12-19T17:38:00.000-08:00

I know not this place I know so well

2011-12-19T17:08:00.000-08:00

I have set my gaze
Upon this terrain
For twenty years
Although I do not yet know it
intimately, strangers are we...
I see the mist
fall on the frosted foothills
Embraced
Recoiled
Always restless
Leaving a trail
Without leaving a mark
The homeless is home

I hear the wind
familiar and yet estranged
Singing a ballad
through symphonic needles
and percussion gorge
a chorus of bent reeds
whom only echo space

I recognize the redness
the redress
of dawn
claiming cloud
horizon
the water's reflection below
I stand in stillness
shallow breath
my own mist revealed
knowing that this very exactness
shall not pass this way again....

Timothy Anderson
December 2011

2011-12-19T16:27:00.000-08:00

Amy Grant's gift to David

2011-12-19T16:24:00.001-08:00

A Christmas Classic. My sis will never live this down...

2011-12-19T14:32:00.000-08:00

Amy Grant. The Night Before Christmas. Song written by super song writer Carly Simon

2011-12-19T13:42:00.000-08:00

2011-12-19T13:34:00.000-08:00

2011-12-19T13:26:00.000-08:00

The Ross Lake Tram....

2011-12-19T13:06:00.000-08:00

I saw this shot and instantly remembered riding this as a kid. I was like four or five at the time.

My father came over to see what I was looking at and upon recognizing it, he began talking about a hunting trip he'd taken with his buddy Karl Hoff. They'd ridden this tram up to the reservoir, eventually taking the tug and barge across Ross Lake, and after disembarking they hiked up above treeline where they made camp. Their goal was to bag a Mountain Goat or Dahl Sheep, with a good rack of horns. In the morning, when they awoke, as the two Elmer Fudd's looked out their tent flaps, they realized overnight it had snowed 6 inches.

Did I mention it was still late summer?

And while the terrain was great for goats and sheep, the new snow pack became a treacherous, no match deal for Karl and my father as they took up hunting rifles and proceeded to slide all over the peaks. In the end, both men returned home with no goat or sheep for either of them--although on a later hunting trip, Karl did finally get his goat.

It's funny, as my father talked about their adventures, the memory this spawned. I can also now see that amazing white mount, at the foot of their dining room table, a big brute of animal, he with those giant horns and long tufts of hair.

Many years in the future, on my own backpacking trips, I would awake to find goats right outside my tent. I still think of Karl and now my father, every time I see one.

As a child, I began to embrace an instinctive sense that the wilderness was my true home. A couple years after riding the tram up into North Cascades National Park, it would be Karl and his wife Verona that accompanied my family on my first back packing trip deep into the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area. I suppose this happened when I was 7 years old. My mom did not know she was preggo with my sis Kellie at the time...and it is no small feat to hike up that butt puckering series of switchbacks when you're not preggo...and she still reminds my father of this feat every chance she gets.

That part of the Alpine Lakes has always held my respect. I've returned several times since I was a child and on one such hike brought my boyfriend. It almost broke us up. With me all about the endurance and pushing the pain as far out of my mind as possible, and even as the exertion nearly killed my boyfriend-especially when he realized I'd put a six pack of cola in his pack (I had nearly everything else). We would discover as we froze our ass off that night that sleeping in the same sleeping bag was not nearly as practical or warm as we'd originally imagined it would be.

I can not imagine not having an addiction to the high country, the serenity of stillness, the sound of geese taking flight...and the calving of glaciers. These are the symphonies that have inspired my writing, kept me sane through great upheaval, and that remain the most beautiful welcome mat celebrating place, homecoming, and beauty. And to think it all began with a tram ride!

2011-12-19T12:02:00.001-08:00

2011-12-19T11:56:00.000-08:00

Hat tip : Tin

2011-12-19T11:50:00.000-08:00

2011-12-19T11:46:00.000-08:00

2011-12-19T11:45:00.000-08:00

2011-12-19T11:44:00.000-08:00

2011-12-19T11:43:00.000-08:00

2011-12-19T11:39:00.001-08:00

2011-12-19T11:37:00.000-08:00

Leavenworth...by Christmas OCD

2011-12-18T19:57:00.000-08:00

2011-12-18T19:56:00.000-08:00

2011-12-18T19:53:00.000-08:00

2011-12-18T19:48:00.000-08:00

2011-12-18T19:47:00.000-08:00

It takes ...one...two...three villages!

2011-12-18T19:16:00.000-08:00

Yep. Ya guessed it. Crazy time at the Anderson's. Itis the most wonderful time of the year and the decorating blitz is on....

So dad calls last night. "Well I think the decorations are finally done."

I look at the date. December 17. We started on Thanksgiving weekend. The outside lights went on their house today.

And I take a deep breath, I look outside my own place, and this year not a Christmas light is on anything up here. I think time is failing me. Or possibly, I just need to hold on to the crystals falling from the ice fog, and stare at them through the heavens, and hold on to that magic.

2011-12-18T19:09:00.000-08:00

2011-12-18T19:08:00.001-08:00

2011-12-18T19:08:00.000-08:00

2011-12-18T19:04:00.000-08:00

2011-12-18T19:03:00.000-08:00

2011-12-18T19:02:00.000-08:00

2011-12-18T19:00:00.001-08:00

2011-12-18T19:00:00.000-08:00

Guess which building is hosting the gay circuit party with the fab ghosts, fan dancers, and oh yeah...the pole dancing?

2011-12-18T18:58:00.000-08:00

2011-12-18T18:57:00.000-08:00

Middle earth and mist....

2011-12-18T18:50:00.000-08:00

2011-12-18T18:49:00.000-08:00

2011-12-18T18:48:00.000-08:00

2011-12-18T18:47:00.000-08:00

2011-12-18T18:46:00.000-08:00

Just saying...

2011-12-06T10:22:00.000-08:00

Hat tip Jesse.

Alpenglow. By Blur.

2011-12-06T10:14:00.000-08:00

2011-12-06T10:13:00.000-08:00

My dad and I. Yesterday.

2011-12-06T10:11:00.000-08:00

2011-12-06T10:01:00.001-08:00

New Moon. Rising. Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area. Washington State

2011-12-06T10:01:00.000-08:00

2011-12-06T09:59:00.000-08:00

2011-12-06T09:58:00.001-08:00

2011-12-06T09:58:00.000-08:00

2011-12-06T09:57:00.000-08:00

2011-12-06T09:56:00.000-08:00

2011-12-06T09:55:00.000-08:00

2011-12-06T09:54:00.001-08:00

2011-12-06T09:54:00.000-08:00

2011-12-06T09:53:00.000-08:00

2011-11-28T16:34:00.000-08:00

I have lived in a vacuum for these last several weeks.

I am unable to acclimate because I am switching out elevations, climates and proximity to the ocean and the Cascade divide, as if they are layers to be shed and adorned. Here is like no where else in the nation because 40 miles of road rash can make the difference between sea level and 5,000 feet in elevation.

In the Intermountain northwest our lives embrace geographical, climate-driven diversity. For those of us living "east of the mountains" life is centered around preparedness.

On the I-5 Corridor most motorists are completely unprepared for adversity. Mobility grinds to halt with the introduction of rain, sleet, snow. and water reflecting sunlight.

In Washington, the Seattle metro area looks inward..The I-5 experience is all that matters and the weather forecasts barely acknowledge the eastern 2/3 rds of the state. But for continental road warriors, those traveling back and forth, we drive these routes expecting to encounter various climates. We hit the road expecting a challenge and rarely are we disappointed. We encounter changing conditions based on elevation, proximity to water, and the directional exposure of the landscape. Facing south, we stare down arid.

Facing north is about lush. East to west and vice versa is subject to thoroughly transitioning seasons based on elevation, differentiated by mountain passes, rain shadows and tracing our way along shorelines.

We engage the shortening daylight while worrying about getting caught in a squall, we carry anti gel additives in winter, extra water and windshield cleaner, de icer and bug degreaser and as temperatures can drop 70 degrees from the coast heading east, we pucker.

I shot these images before the first major storm assaulted the coast, before the last leaves hit the wind and carpeted the ground. Before the warmth of summer finally exited the stage. At the same time I shot these images, already several feet of snow lay on the ground at home. What a difference 400 miles. What a difference elevation. exposure, and perspective make.

I am amazed at color, pattern and texture. I see numerous

2011-11-28T16:15:00.000-08:00

2011-11-28T16:14:00.000-08:00

2011-11-28T16:13:00.000-08:00

2011-11-28T16:11:00.000-08:00

2011-11-28T16:10:00.000-08:00

2011-11-28T16:09:00.000-08:00