Astoria, OR
Elevation: 23ft.

It’s been about two and a half months since I returned from Alaska. As always, time feels like it is oozing around me. Formless, slipping away, fast and slow. Returning from seasonal work is always an adjustment, just ask my cousins. It’s not unusual for me to lock myself up in our home for a week straight. Alaska wasn’t as remote or as physically demanding as many of my past jobs have been but I still felt like I needed to re-acclimate, recharge, reacquaint myself with my old friend – society.

I have been struggling with writing. Be it my personal journal, my instagram, or my blog I just can’t seem to put thoughts into words lately. I partially blame my grad school applications for filling my life with anxiety and self-worth issues. Don’t even mouth the words “Statement of Purpose” to me. The stress and, hopefully, future relief of grad school applications will surely be the defining event of 2018 for me. I can’t tell you all how much I yearn to be released from this anticipation just to then be thrown into the jowls of graduate studies.

I keep telling myself, “It’s all part of the experience”.

The “experience” of course meaning being alive! Being a human on this earth living and feeling and seeing and learning and doing all of the things humans can do. I’m talking about potential, both actualized and in the progress of being so. I am talking about the capacity for each one of us to do or not do anything we are willing to work hard for. Not easy. No. Definitely not, and I am not so naïve a person to believe that we all have the same chances. Far from it. I believe that we all have hills to climb but some of us are given mountains and bare feet.

My family is also on my mind. If grad school is the next step for me then the room I am entering will be filled with opportunity and guilt. Where I will be these next 2-6 years I do not know, but I know that I want to be close to the people who raised me. People whom, for my 27 years and beyond, have been surviving and working and existing for my generation to have a chance to succeed in America. People whose personal dreams are no longer about themselves but are about us. I am a product of a strong and weathered family tree whose branches span wider than the borders of this country and whose roots dig so deeply that they draw from generations of spirit, sweat, and sacrifice.

Where my grandparents will be these next 2-6 years I do not know, but I know that I want be with them.

Upon updating my website with my experiences from Alaska I began running out of things to do. There are no REIs in Astoria and finding a place that will take a worker unsure even of his next few months is hard to do. Inevitably, I resolved to be a bum. I inventoried my things, I cleaned Rhyhorn, I went to Costco. But you can only do these things so many times before you begin to go crazy. I picked up some work with a friend doing home improvement. Basic things like cutting tile, placing tile, cleaning tile. It paid well and I learned a lot and will probably go back. But I also knew that this nomadic, free-floating lifestyle (being unemployed) of mine was quickly coming to an end. Not just a temporary, seasonal end like many of these past years but potentially a permanent end. Let’s be clear, I am not putting myself through the meat grinder that is grad school just to come out unemployed. If I am reading the winds correctly, the beginning of this next chapter of mine could mean the bittersweet end of my nomadic life.

So I went on a road trip.

All it took was some texting back and forth before bed and Becca Klassy and I had hammered out a plan. I would drive south, chasing brighter, drier days to visit her in her new home of Placerville, CA. My plan was simple. Take it long, take it slow, and visit as many folks as I could along the I-5 corridor. My guiding mantra, “It’s all part of the experience”, oh, and, “You’ll never be this free again”.

My first stop was good ol’ Portland to see an old friend, Alan DePerio. A fellow DMV expat, we knew each other from college. It was at steamy house parties, filled with more dude hypebeasts and warm Coors Light than should ever be allowed, that our friendship was formed. Make no mistake though, he was the calm, collected upperclassman and I was the terrified, sweaty freshman being herded into the kitchen for shots of Aristocrat vodka. But time erases all things college except for your GPA and for the night we were just good friends looking for good food and good beer. It wasn’t until this past year that Alan moved to PDX and, for me, he represented a familiar piece of home from a time and phase of my life long ago. It was only the second time that I had gone down to visit him and it was good catching up, eating well, and learning about who we were now.

I arrived in Corvallis around lunch the next day. The plan was to meet up with two other Klamath alums, Rob and Matt, for dinner and to continue onto Eugene that night. I caught up with Rob over coffee and spent the rest of the day walking around the Oregon State University campus. Poking my head in and out of the buildings I took in the college vibes with relish; I really missed the atmosphere created by academia.

Dinner with my old amigos was wonderful. We caught up on each other’s lives and talked about the rest of our Klamath team. Where were we all now? I got some helpful advice from Matt about grad school and some wise, encouraging words from Rob. Leaving town that night I was reminded of how lucky I was to care and be cared for.

Driving through the darkness I made my way to Eugene, the next city down I-5 and the home of my dear friends Kaitlin and Maybe. That lucky feeling continued on as I got to spend the day exploring Siuslaw National Forest with my two adventure partners. Like Alan, Kaitlin and I go back to college days. Unlike Alan, it was as art students that our friendship was formed. Haphazard at best, we’ve unintentionally weaved in and out of each other’s lives for the past 5 years, “like a pair of fuckin’ electrons”. A little over a year ago Kaitlin and Maybe moved to Eugene and in the few times I’ve gone down to see them since, they have become an important part of my life and time here in Oregon.

Day 4 of my road trip found me sitting in a Eugene apartment parking lot frantically thumbing away on my rapidly antiquating iPhone 6s. I had just received word from the University of Virginia that I was to be flown out to Charlottesville for a “recruitment weekend”! What excitement and disbelief had initially filled me was quickly replaced with stress and annoyance for not bringing my laptop with me. The reason being that I had to quickly get word out to several out-of-state friends that our big, once-in-a-lifetime PNW road trip that was months in the making was going to effectively be cut in half. I needed to figure out logistics for them, plane tickets for myself, and drive 9 hours to be in Placerville by nightfall. A guilty and apologetic email sent I pulled out of the parking lot and began my long drive south.

The long, mountainous drive through the State of Jefferson is a familiar and beautiful one. Following I-5 south I snaked through lush green valleys connected by vast, hilly swaths of agricultural land. Ahead of me I was greeted by an endless blue horizon broken only by Mt. Shasta.

I hadn’t seen Becca since our trip to the Olympic Peninsula last February and she had since moved down to Placerville to work for Summitview as part of the equine staff. I had planned to break up the drive into three, three-hour parts but ultimately drove until I reached Redding before taking a substantial break. Tired and ready for a warm bed and a familiar face I finally pulled into the tiny town of Placerville, CA around 20:00.

Day 1 of Lake Placer-hoe

It is at this point that I began my journey through the Placerville/ Lake Tahoe area. A 4-day adventure with Becca Klassy and co. that, for many reasons, would deserve it’s own blog post. But for the sake of my and the reader’s sanity, will mainly be shown through pictures.

Day 1 of my visit was spent outdoor bouldering for the first time with Becca and new friends, Jake, Orik, and Tucker.

I started bouldering back in 2015 to strengthen my climbing skills for fieldwork. I was terrified of heights and believed that knowledge was the best way to dampen my fear.

Don’t let the photos fool you! I spent my entire climbing time attempting a V0 crack climb only to have a total nervous breakdown at the last part of the problem. The fear of falling and seriously injuring myself is still very much unconquered but I really owe it to these guys and their patience for taking care of me both up and down the rock.

For our session the group took me to a favorite spot of theirs just west of the beautiful Donner Lake.

Calling it a day we packed up our things and hiked up to the nearby summit. Gazing out east we had a clear, beautiful view of Donner Lake and the Carson Range.

Day 2 was spent exploring the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe with Becca. The 122,240-acre lake falls short of only the Great Lakes in size, and Crater Lake in depth. It is a pristine, vivid blue and sits nestled in the Sierra Nevada range at a stunning 6,225ft. With Becca’s signature bowl of breakfast oatmeal in our bellies we spent the whole day photographing the lake’s eastern shore.

One of our main stops was Secret Cove, known for being a pristine, nudist beach.

Our second major stop was Bonsai Rock where Becca hoped to capture the famous rock right at sunset. Note that the hike down to Bonsai Rock wasn’t the easiest and, wearing only chacos and carrying all my camera gear, I personally didn’t feel like it was worth it and stopped a bit short of Bonsai Rock.

Day 3 in Placer-hoe was spent exploring the old shops lining Placerville Downtown. The tiny town had just about anything a tourist could want ranging from antiques to hippy soap to outdoor gear. The main street had a few bonus gems that I didn’t expect, such as a historic hardware store and a shop dedicated to psychedelic rock records and posters.

Day 4, my last morning in Placer-hoe, was when I got to meet Becca’s horse, Chester, for the first time. I had heard a lot about him over the years but never made it out to meet him when they were still living in Oregon. I also have a fear of horses – they are just so big.

I shadowed Becca as she went through her usual routine with Chester. She cleaned his feet, brushed his hair, and ran him through some exercises in the arena.

It was my first time watching someone run a horse through verbal drills and was fascinated. It reminded me of the dear sled dogs that I lived with this past summer and was a reminder of the complex and amazing relationships animals and humans can have.

By this time I had been on the road for 7 days and had begun to miss my own bed. As the sun set behind the edge of the valley I chased Mt. Shasta like a ghost through the cold night. It was just me, the hum of Rhyhorn’s engine, and my thoughts. It was as if the dark winding drive back through the State of Jefferson was melting away what little peace I had managed to find on this trip. Peace or escape, I’m not quite sure. With each lonely turn on that dark highway I was carried deeper into thoughts about my family, my responsibilities, and the life I had made for myself out here in Oregon. 6 hours later and I had arrived in Medford, OR.

To describe Grandma Templeman would be to describe a warrior queen that has travelled near every inch of this great country and touched nearly as many lives. It was her, Grandpa Templeman and their church that sponsored my mother and her family to the U.S. during the Cambodian Civil War of the early 70s. With the help of the church, they took my family in, clothed them, fed them, and gave them a leg to stand on. To put a value on what her and Grandpa did for our family would be impossible and is why I drive to Medford to see her every winter I can.

We spent the night and much of the next day catching up on each other’s lives and families. At 90 she is the picture of health and strength and is every bit as happy as the last time I saw her. Just before lunch I helped her with a few things around the house that she had been wanting done. I removed a little gate that had made getting into her shed difficult, reinforced a broken fence, somewhat mounted a garden hose holder, and re-insulated a trapdoor leading to her basement. With Grandpa Templeman gone she could only do so much to upkeep her home and was adamant about not letting her home run wild. I thought a lot about how much my grandpa was able to do as a younger man and how he, at 91, was in much poorer shape than Grandma Templeman. Belly full of chicken salad and heart full of her love I hugged her goodbye and hit the road for Eugene.

Slipping out of the quiet Medford neighborhood I made my way north and began the last leg of my trip. Engine roaring, white dashes seemed to fly past me as I cut my way through fiery hills. The sun was already beginning to set and I had 3 hours to rally my energy. I was off to see Kaitlin and her friends.

If I had a snapshot of every time I’ve had a drink with Kaitlin Akers it would be an album filled with many different lives. We first met in a studio photography class in 2012 in good ol’ Fairfax, VA. She had long, curly blonde hair and I had a slicked back man bun. From there it was a strange hit or miss dance of a couple of art kids running into each other at the Starbucks or the college bars downtown. Then it became a once-in-a-long-time cup of coffee, a couple of nomads catching each other “on the way out” of Virginia. There was even a time we grabbed a couple of glasses of wine at a Whole Foods during one of my visits home. She had green hair, and I had long nappy dreads. So many lives it seems. Imagine then, the surreal feeling I had sitting around a table with her and her friends drinking Pliney the Elder in a Eugene bottle shop talking about the drought the Willamette Valley was going to have next summer. I don’t know when or where I will run into her next but I’m excited to see who we are then.

2018 is going to be a year of great change for not just me but many of my closest friends and family. Even if the changes are not great, or for the best, it is still a year that will find us all stronger and smarter and more hopeful than ever. That’s something I really believe.

And even if I’ll never be this free again, I know it’s all part of the experience.

Mahalo and with all my love,

Chris