Dead Letter Dept #114

weather report

E. says things are weird around the solstice. I’ve been sleeping so hard, in between bouts of insomnia, holding on to the wisps of dreams with both hands as I draw slowly back up into the waking world. A couple nights ago I dreamt of one of those insanely fancy prix fixe restaurants, one tiny immaculate dish after another, which I was eating with my family, all four of us casually around a table, even though one of us is dead.

It’s hard to summarize these days, isn’t it? Even just when people ask how you are.

Every year, my mom & I tell each other when the news comes that Artist Point is finally open—a trailhead far up Route 542, above the snow-line, even in July, that has to be plowed clear of the enormous drifts, even while the summer sun is beating down from above—& say, we should go this year! And then, usually, we forget about it for a few weeks, or a couple of months, until we hear sometime in early fall that the roads are snowed in and Artist Point is closed until the next warm season rolls in the following year.

This time, though, we actually managed it, flinging breakfast down early in the morning & setting off before the roads got too busy, each of us noting when we felt like we’d passed out of our everyday borders (mine was when we crossed the turn for Hannegan, which I take to visit my friend in Lynden), rolling past the county towns as they got smaller and smaller, through Deming & Kendall & Maple Valley & Glacier, each of them a little more remote, until at last the towns fell away & we were in the forest.

The places where fractured sunlight fell were lined with lupine & ocean spray, as we crossed and recrossed the Nooksack River, sometimes so close I could hear the water roaring over the rocks, green-blue in the deepest parts, still carrying that alpine chill. We passed the closed up lodges, the huge hanging mobiles of the ski lifts, gone still for the season, one perilous switchback after another. There were stern signs instructing us that all vehicles must carry chains between April & November, and then one in huge capital letters, warning “THERE IS NO MOUNTAIN PASS,” letting us know we would reach the top & then go no further, unless it was on foot or by ski. You can’t cross over the range by road from here—or anywhere near here. It’s all mountains, the 140 mile stretch of the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, through the Cascades, touching the edge of Canada, running all the way down to the northern border of Mount Rainier National Park, and we were perched up in the peaks.

So were a lot of other people—this is a common pilgrimage around here, when the roads open, and there were a lot of extremely outdoorsy people strapping on ski boots & helmets, diligently spraying themselves with sunscreen to protect from the vicious glare off of those vast stretches of gleaming white, cracking open the trunk of their camping vehicles to cook on little stoves, while little kids, minds absolutely blown by the secret winter they’d discovered, tromped out over the snow fields & did their best to make snowballs out of the grainy, compacted stuff under their feet. I watched one dog, clearly a winter lover, maybe part husky, get out of the car & rush, straining at the edge of its leash, to the snow where it rolled around on its back ecstatically for at least five minutes. There were other people like me, not dressed for hiking, clearly just there to look at the view, all of us smiling at each other the way you do at a party where you don’t know the other guests; invited to Artist Point by the season, and only discovering who else was on the list once you arrived.

I picked my way across the snow myself to peer out at the view, down the way we’d come, past Picture Lake, up even higher, where the trails carry you out into the mountains, sky implausibly blue and bright above us, and then we drove back down into summer. It was getting busy even then, long lines of cars passing us, the Sikh Bicycle Club in little matching outfits peddling with legs that must be made of steel springs, but I’d noted the mile marker for what looked like an easy way for my busted-ass knees to climb down to the river, so we pulled over one last time. I followed the kayak access out to a wooden walkway and then a natural stone ramp leading right down to the river, which felt even better right up close; all that water, never stopping.

reading room

I finished Monsters, by Claire Dederer, which I’ll have things to say about once I’ve gone through & taken notes on it, and I’m nearing the end of Pam Houston’s Contents May Have Shifted. I read a tons of her books when I was in my 20s and my friend B. strongly recommended her work, but it’s been years since I’d read her, and grabbing onto that clear-eyed longing again has been wonderful, waking up the echoes of reading her work ages ago. This one’s working title was “144 Reasons not to Commit Suicide,” & it’s very concentrated, each little interlude full to bursting, but that means it’s correspondingly intense to read. and I keep having to take breaks.

I think next I’ll want something that I can go into face-first and float around inside, & if you have suggestions you can always email me at departmentofdeadletters@gmail.com.

Thank you, as always, for reading, and particularly to those who are able to support the Dead Letter Department by subscribing. I’ll write to you again soon, and in the meantime, may you find yourself doing that thing you’ve been meaning to do for such a long time, because it was somehow just the right day for it.