A Journey into the Past

Just so you don't think I stay in the village all the time, I will tell you about my "out" last week. An "out" is the Holden term for leaving the village for a few days (kind of like a mini vacation.) I went to Seattle to visit my friend, Chris, and some other friends there. We went to a Mariners game one night, ate fish and chips one afternoon, bought a few groceries for me to bring back, read and enjoyed watching the boats go in and out of the Ballard locks. I even got Chris to take a couple laps in the swimming pool at her condo. It was kinda cold, but the water was warmish.

On Saturday, I took a trip up to Bellingham, the town where I lived for nine years back in the "old days." (The "old days" being the formative years from age 4 to age 13, which was more that 54 years ago.) On the trip up from Seattle, Anni, a former long termer at Holden, rode with me as she is getting ready to go back to school at Western Washington University. We exited I-5 at Chuckanut Drive, a beautiful drive of about 15-20 miles ending in Bellingham. This was my first foray into the memorys of my childhood. I remember driving along this road to go to the beach at Larabee State Park where we would have picnics and swim and where, on July 4th, my dad would shoot off fireworks. We would also listen to band concerts at a band shell in the park that I was pleased to see still exists to this day. As I was dropping Anni off at a friend's apartment, I realized it was only two blocks away from the house I used to live in. We drove past it, but couldn't see much as it is really overgrown with bushes, etc. After dropping Anni off, I then met up with Janet, one of my good friends from grade school days, and her friend, Celia, and we took a trip down memory lane. We toured the south side of Bellingham and, believe it or not, I was able to recognize many of the old places from my childhood. As we drove around, more and more memories kept coming back to us and we had a lot of fun remembering those days. We drove by the old house again and could see it better from the side road. It appeared to be in good shape and I wish I could have gone inside, but didn't. We drove past Janet's old house too, which although she lives in the town, she hadn't seen in several years. We drove past the church, the elementary and junior high schools I went to, the library I used to love to visit. We think we even recognized the shop that used to be my mom's baby shop. Although the south side, the Fairhaven area, was really upgraded and has become a touristy area with cute shops and a lot of restaurants, etc., the old buildings are still intact and I was able to pick out places I used to know. It was a really fun day for me and I did take several pictures of these memorable places.

This is a picture taken from a scenic overlook along Chuckanut Drive

This is the house in Bellingham that I grew up in


This picture is taken from the corner where I used to stand when on school crossing patrol.


Here I am with my childhood friend, Janet.

Bear With Us

These signs are posted by the US Forest Service to warn people that they are in "Bear Country." We have them posted at various places in the area we inhabit. This one is posted at the edge of the village.

Until this year I haven't seen a bear. This year the bears seem to hang around in the wooded areas around the village and come into the village at night to see what they can find to munch on. They are often seen early in the mornings. Last week there was one on the porch of one of the lodges.....because someone left a plate of food out there by mistake.

Saturday I took a short hike with friends Larry and Gundula Houff, who are here for a month. Larry was our pastor here two years ago and is now filling in for Pastor Erik for while he is on a short sabbatical. On the path up to the compost bins, we saw a bear cross the path. The compost bins seem to be another place the bears love to hunt for food and the electric fence doesn't seem to keep them out.

The bears have been a real problem this summer and the people in Operations are getting weary of chasing them away every day. It seems they have become quite comfortable here and don't get the hint that they are not wanted. Luckily so far they have not decided to eat us!

In the Cool of the Evening

I was going to title this, "A break in the weather," and it sort of is because it had been very hot here for a couple of weeks. However, a couple of weeks isn't a very long time and we have had a pretty nice summer otherwise, even though it's been really dry for a couple of months now.

It has been raining for two days straight. What a nice relief from the heat. What a nice relief from the dust that rises from the road. What a nice relief for the forest that was getting too dry for comfort. We remember the fire that made us evacuate the village a year ago. As a matter of fact we had an anniversary party the other night and watched slides of that fire. Now everything is saturated with rain and there is not much danger of that happening this year.

The rain has brought much cooler weather. The thermometer on the outside wall of the dining hall read 54 degrees at 8 o'clock last night. It probably got down in the 40's, but I won't know that until they post the temperatures later this morning. And... there was new snow on the top of Dumbell Mountain last night. It was a real welcomed sight. We get so excited about snow around here.

The village is smaller now because many of the summer staff people are leaving....however the guests are not, so that means more work for the staff that is still here. But, it's still good! The change in the weather feels good. It is refreshing and exciting and feels like fall is right around the corner. And it is!

Review: Abriendo Caminos

Abriendo Caminos week ended at 1:45 this afternoon as the guests boarded the bus to head to Lucerne to take the boat downlake. Last week I promised more about this annual event. Abriendo Caminos means "opening pathways" and it is our annual week of opening pathways between us and our Spanish speaking neighbors. Most come from towns in Washington, but many also come from California and other places. During this week all sessions, announcements and worship services are done in Spanish with English translations. We get a lot of opportunity to work on our Spanish skills.
Last night (Friday) was La Fiesta: great food, pinata bursting, music and worship, which began as a procession and ended at the ark with more music and dancing.
I took quite a few pictures and I spent several hours today figuring out how to make a movie out of them on my computer. I tried to attach it to this blog, but our satellite connection is too slow. Therefore, here are a couple of the pictures.

The decorated dining hall

We were entertained by a mariachi band

Pinata time
We had pinatas for all ages!

For some reason I have been having trouble getting this blog on. I have been working on it since Saturday. (This is Tuesday now). I wanted to put some other pictures on it, but I give up!! So this is all I can do for now. Hopefully, next time will be better.

Garbo (not Greta)

Garbo: noun: The Holden Village word for garbage.

Garbologist: noun: The Holden Village word for the person in charge of garbo.
"I am on garbo": The phrase used by Holden Village staff members when their garbo duty is imminent.

Once a month each staff member at Holden is "on garbo." Garbo is done every day except Sunday in the summer and three or four times a week in the winter. What exactly is garbo duty? Well it starts out in the basement of the hotel with breaking down cardboard boxes that have accumulated since the day before so the garbologist can put them in a huge machine that bundles them for recycling. Then the garbo team grabs yucky work gloves and goes out to the "garbo dock" at the edge of the village and sorts garbage: aluminum cans, tranlucent plastic, opaque plastic, tin cans, and clear, brown, or green glass all go into their respective recycling cans. Burnable trash goes into another, landfill goes into another. When all that is done.....we head up the hill to the compost bins. All food is composted at Holden. At the compost bins all leftover food is dumped into a large metal box and chopped up by the garbo team. When it is sufficiently chopped, it is dumped into one of the many compost bins, covered with sawdust and "cooked" compost and left to compost. This is a dirty stinky job in the summer and a freezing cold job most of the winter. I must add though that it is also quite satisfying and very educational.

The compost bins are often inhabited by little critters looking for a meal. There are usually chipmunks around and often martins are there too. Bears often find some tasty morsel in the compost bins and the electric fence put up to keep them out doesn't keep them out! The food is left to compost for a year or so and when is is done "cooking" it is used in the flower beds around the village and in the garden.

Since so many critters enjoy eating human food whenever they get the chance, we are careful not to put any leftover food anywhere but in the compost cans in the dining hall or the dishpit. (The dishpit is another story). We do have a lot of outside eating though. In the summer we have a lot of meals outside. The chipmunks around the village are very fat eating the crumbs that fall off of people's plates. They even jump up on our laps at times to get something to eat. They jump right down again though when we scream and jump up ourselves.

Tonight some of us were invited to play dominoes at the little Forest Ranger cabin that is just down the road from the village. The ranger, Barbara Budd, is a regular around here and she was really excited about having us come visit. Thus the bear adventure begins. It was after the Eucharist service and Liz and Debi had started walking down the road. I was several minutes behind them as I was cleaning up the communion ware in the dishpit (another story). Anyway I went back to my room to get my flashlight as it was already pitch dark down the road. As I got to the garbo dock I was surprised to see several people with flashlights there looking around...and even more surprised to see that Debi and Liz had not gotten any further that that. Then they told me about the bears. It seems they were walking down the road and heard a noise on the garbo dock. When Debi swung her flashlight around to see what was making the noise, she saw a bear cub clinging to a tree. Then she saw another. They ran to the the nearest building, the Hike Haus, and got on the radio and called to tell Marc, Nancy, and Aaron about the bears. They were all there looking for the bears when I arrived. It seems somehow the garbo dock had some leftover food on it and the bears found it. After helping to clean it up and since the bears were still nearby, we decided to call it a night. To make a long story short, poor Barbara never got company and is probably still wondering why we didn't show up to play dominoes. We will have to explain tomorrow!!

Preview: Abriendo Caminos

Hola,

We are preparing for Holden's sixth annual Abriendo Caminos event beginning this Sunday, August 10th. This is a week dedicated solely to the Spanish speaking community and those of us who enjoy being here for the celebration. This will be the fifth year I have had the opportunity to be here during this week. All events are presented in Spanish with translations in English. We are treated to real Mexican food all week. Yum! The week culminates on Friday night with a fiesta. I will, of course, be posting pictures of the events of the week on my blog. I'll even let you in on what Abriendo Caminos means, so keep in touch! Hasta Luego, amigos y amigas.