As I start my day, begin to foment my tiny daily resolutions if not revolutions, if not responsible restitutions and etc., I think about what the hickety hell I do in the classroom. What keeps me going back? Keeps me from repeating myself? It's who's there, who might be there, who might speak, might say or write something surprising to wake me up. Structure and surprise? What is art? What is teaching? Who teaches? Who listens? Looks inward? Looks outside? RUNS?? I've said I'll run a session I've given the title to so I have no excuse for not knowing what I mean. But, I wonder what I mean, and if I can talk about "Organic Syllabus Development." Holy crickets. Do I mean look around the room for clues to how the class runs and run another way? Do I mean listen to the students? Teacher? Myself? I was thinking it was funny, OSD so like OCD and other educational/psychological TLA's, how meaningless in all their vaunted shorthand meaning. I have a habit of sidestepping deep crevasses in favor of muddying puddles that are easier to recover from. Walk towards the roar of the world the man said the other day on the radio, Michael Meade I mean. Oh, I like that as a mantra and stance, but do I do it? I'm talking about high minded classroom philosophical stance while meanwhile going into school today to repeat a lesson I've taught a dozen times before. Do I let myself off the hook by saying but I will pay attention to what the kids say and write? Is this an easy A? I am shamelessly, have always been a good student, someone who picks up on what the situation calls for and provides it. Is that even true? Am I too hard on myself? I am tired and discouraged and not so jazzed even with this amazing weather.

This weekend, Jim and I drove onto (on to? to? on?) the Edmonds ferry to Kingston, crossed the Hood Canal Bridge and drove to Port Townsend, where we ate dinner at Silver Water Cafe and stayed at the Water Street Hotel with a bathroom down the hall. We ordered the appetizer with chantrell mushrooms, figs, goat cheese and bacon blanket on a skewer. From Port Townsend, we drove to Sequim for breakfast at Gwennie's Cafe. We didn't intend to go to Gwennie's, just to breakfast. Sun everywhere. Warm. September. Our waiter was mid-sixties, male and gay. My father says he has/I have relatives in Sequim. I don't even know what their last name would be, though maybe Peak, since my Dad's mom's maiden name was Peak. Brownie Ethel Peak. Huh. And my dad and aunt look Makah. Huh. He says he's always suspected he's part Mongolian. Huh.

I love car riding! I will miss petroleum, though I would never chant "drill, baby, drill". We drove up to Hurricane Ridge in the clear morning air. CLEAR and bright at the lodge and meeting place for a walking tour of the meadow which we took with our young volunteer ranger, Joanna. We each got a card with an animal on it. Our mission was to think about what that animal would find to eat on our walk. I had a black bear and Jim had a coyote, a very handsome upstanding one. I got a little huffy when our guide, who is from Tennessee, presumed to tell us about my homeland. I may become crotchety as an old woman. Stay tuned. My mother now sounds like an old woman on the phone. She's entitled, at 83. The book I'm reading, The Echo Maker, has a fellow of 55 in it who the author, Richard Powers, an otherwise brilliant man and writer, keeps referring to as old, as in quite preoccupied with his end times, as in withered and finished, and what I want to say is, in what universe?!?!?! I am 56, my still-functional hackles up and pointy. But back to Hurricane Ridge, where the view included no fog or lack of visibility whatsoever, a day in a hundred, two hundred, three hundred? Not even the tiniest bit filmy our view. Wow! I pointed out to a couple older than I am something Joanna, not being a native, had missed. A way to tell hemlock from fir is to check for the bent over top. That calmed me down. Really, I wasn't overtly a horrible territorial tourist, just in my big fat head. We drove to Lake Crescent, to Log Cabin Resort, where we spent a night on our honeymoon, and where my family vacationed many times when I was a child. The magic had faded. The counterman at the lodge ignored us. Perhaps he was taking drugs or drinking. Perhaps he was about to go off duty. A woman came into the space as we were leaving, and went behind the counter. I felt invisible or unwanted. Log Cabin Resort used to be privately owned but is now part of the National Park concession. It seems to have conceded and shrunk. It doesn't look in very good repair. Lake Crescent continues beautiful, mysterious and deep. The mountains loom, covered with vegetation. Log Cabin Resort's tacky gift shop had zorries with huge fake jewels carelessly pasted on and two four foot plastic tubes filled with s'more makings, including melted masses of chocolate that once were sectioned chocolatey bars, not Hershey. We took our photos in front of the cabin we slept in 32 years ago, one at a time since the iPhone doesn't have the self timer feature, and drove out of there to find Lake Crescent Lodge on the other side. Lake Crescent Lodge was in much better repair and felt far more welcoming. We sat in Adirondack chairs on the beach. Log Cabin Resort used to have Adirondack chairs on the porches of its cabins, so I spent a moment checking to see if these were stolen. We split an order of fish and chips, which were huge and good. The porches of these cabins had rockers on them. Not those big Kennedy rockers, but little, straight ones. We went on, to Kalaloch. Fog began to filter through the trees as we approached the ocean, and we were happy to see it after so much disorienting sun on the Olympic Peninsula. Kalaloch was booked. Solid. They called ahead to Lake Quinault Lodge "our sister resort" but it too was booked. We drove there anyway, with two hotel names written on notepaper in my fist. There was a cancellation at Lake Quinault Lodge, and we got a room. We sat in Adirondack chairs on the lawn that slopes down to the lake shore with a glass of wine (me) and a glass of beer (Jim). The Adirondacks are far from here, and they were far from McMinnville, Oregon, where my great grandfather made at least two Adirondacks chairs for the family to sit on. The next morning, we rented a canoe for an hour and paddled the glassy west and south perimeter of Lake Quinault.